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THE ARRANT ROYER 


NOVELS BY BERTA RUCK 

His Official Fiancee 

The Wooing of Rosamond Fayre 

The Boy with Wings 

In Another Girl’s Shoes 

The Girls at His Billet 

Miss Million’s Maid 

The Three of Hearts 

The Years for Rachel 

A Land-Girl’s Love Story 

The Disturbing Charm 

Sweethearts Unmet 

The Bridge of Kisses 

Sweet Stranger 

The Arrant Rover 






























Those other loves . . . none of them can ever 
come again. 




THE ARRANT 
ROVER 


BY 


BERTA RUCK 


FRONTISPIECE BY 


EDWARD C. CASWELL l 


“ I know my Love by his way of walking, 

And I know my Love by his way of talking. 

And I know my Love dressed in his coat of blue. 
And if my Love leaves me, what will I do? 

But still,” she cried, “ he loves me the best, 

And a troubled mind, sure, can know no rest! 
But still,” she cried, “bonnie boys are few, 

And if my Love leaves me, what will I do? 

I know my love is an arrant rover ” 


— Old Irish Song . 


NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
1921 




Copyright, 1921 

By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc. i, 



e ©ufnn & Soften Company 

BOOK MANUFACTURERS 
RAHWAY NEW JERSEY 




OCT 1 1 1921 

©CI.A624776 

'Vt *V’ 


DEDICATED TO 

SOME OF YOU EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE THAT 
MEN 

(WHO HATE TO ADMIT IT!) 

ARE STILL 

THE MORE FAITHFUL SEX. 

























% 
















































CONTENTS 


PART I 
GLAMOUR 

(Surrey and the Pine-Woods: May) 

PAGE 

Prelude 3 

CHAPTER 

I He Meets the Girl 7 

II Pocket Venus 23 

III Clash 43 

IV A Race 58 

V Climax 69 

VI Anti-Climax 91 

PART II 
BOREDOM 

(The Heart of Wales: June) 

VII He Meets the Girl 101 

VIII Blue Rock and Yellow Hammer . 119 

IX The Game of Dare 135 

X Calling 141 

XI Climax Again 157 


CONTENTS 


PART III 
IDLENESS 

(France and the Emerald Coast: July) 

CHAP1EK PAGE 

XII Another Anti-Climax .... 175 

XIII He Meets the Girls ..... 191 

XIV The House of Many Voices . . . 205 

XV The Child-Lead 216 

XVI The Sinews of Love 229 

XVII Turn of the Game 245 

XVIII Man's Voice 253 

PART IV 
FATE 

(Scotland and the Heather : August) 

XIX He Meets the Girl 275 

XX The Elliptical Interview . . . 291 

XXI White Night — and Daylight . . 297 

XXII Three Days' Wooing 311 

XXIII Nine Days' Wonder 326 

XXIV Crash 353 

XXV Climax 363 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


Prelude 

T HIS is to be the story of a young man, to 
think of whom is to visualize with some ador- 
ing female face close to his own. 

He had, of course, plenty of other characteristics. 
He was not merely a man of “ affairs ” ( either writ- 
ten with the “ e ” that suggests impropriety, or 
without it). It does not follow that a man has no 
full-face merely because most of his portraits show 
him in profile. 

Our very first sideways glimpse, then, of Archie 
Laverock shows him with an adoring female face 
bent above his own. His own being scarlet and 
creased as a poppy-bud newly released from the 
sheath; featureless, senile, working blindly fero- 
cious with the Will-to-Live, and, judged by normal 
standards, entirely hideous. 

“ Ah, the bonnie boy ! ” was, however, his greet- 
ing in the adoring female voice that belonged to the 
attendant face, rosy under a snowy linen band. 
“ Such a tall son for you, Mrs. Laverock ! ” 

Another voice, running high with excitement, 
called from the bed, “ A boy? Really a boy? Oh, 
Nurse darling, are you sure f ” 

Nurse smiled over the deftly handled sponge and 
soft towels. “ Quite sure, my dear.” 

3 


4 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


“ Then ” — the voice from the pillow sank to the 
sigh of successful achievement — “ then . . . just 

wrap him up in that . . . that ” 

She pointed. Her hand shook a little; it bore 
the semicircular mark of teeth that had been driven 
into the flesh rather than that a cry should disgrace 
the lips of a fighting-woman. She pointed to a wisp 
of white hanging over the bed-rail. “ That,” came 
the whisper of exhaustion. “ You know what I 

told you about it. The saying ” 

“ Ah, that’ll come true anyway, bless his beauti- 
ful face. No need to worry about that,” crooned 
the nurse. 

But she wrapped the lacy night-gown, shawl- 
wise, about the little, warm, powder-scented, flan- 
nelly bundle before she brought him under the gaze 
of his mother’s eyes. 

That old, old saying runs — 

“ Wrap him in his mother’s shift and the girls 
will love him ” 

So — — What could you expect? 


PART I 
GLAMOUR 

(SURREY AND THE PINE-WOODS: 
MAY) 


V 




CHAPTER ONE 

i 

HE MEETS THE GIRL 

“Whose cruell handling when that Squire beheld, 

And saw those villaines her so vildely use, 

His gentle heart with indignation sweld, 

And could no longer beare so great abuse.” 

— Spenser. 

B Y the time he was twenty-five, Archie Laverock 
(the Arrant Rover) was “ through ” with 
girls. 

Not angrily so. He wasn’t disillusioned, blasd, 
or bitter at all. Merely he’d had enough of them, 
thought he, to last his time. The Armistice had 
been for Love as well as for War, as far as young 
Laverock w^as concerned. Personally he did not 
care if he never met another woman. 

It was naturally at this juncture that he met 
Her. Unforeseeing and at peace with all his world 
the young man tooled along leafy lanes of Surrey 
in the two-seater. Glossily new she was. The 
immaculate putty-colour of her paint and padding, 
the silver of her gadgets winking in the sunlight 
would have taken the eye of any woman on the 
road. Young Laverock was concerned with the 
lightness and swiftness of the car; the ease with 
which she responded to the least touch on the accel- 
erator. Thoughts and eyes free of other preoccu- 
pation he drove, happily . . . To be pulled up in a 
second by that which was to happen. 

So suddenly it leapt into that decor of peaceful 


8 THE ARRANT ROYER 

lane, May-time hedges, daisied fields and further 
view of swaying, sighing pine-woods. The crash 
of human storm; the flash of passion, crude vio- 
lence, and tragedy! All of it so swift, so start- 
ling. ... 

To begin with, the “ Pup-pup-pup ! ” of a motor- 
cycle, growing more distinct. A haze of dust 
hastening down the road towards the car, then 
nearing the cross-roads. The appearing figures of 
a man, riding; of a girl in the side-car. The man 
was heavily-built and of middle-age; he wore a well- 
cut brown belted Burberry and a soft hat ; the girl 
was smallish, crouched down against the breeze, 
one saw little of her but her tiny hat of brilliant 
blue, from which there streamed out a veil of 
equally brilliant tulle. These people talked as the 
motor-cycle dashed up; talked rapidly and simul- 
taneously. . . . 

“ Quarrelling? Married,” thought, idly, the Ar- 
rant Rover. His first distant glance at them 
showed him that there was something odd about 
this pair who turned to each other as they sped 
along and had so much, feverishly, to say. . . . 
Such agility that one cannot possibly write or con- 
vey incidents in the “ flash ” that they sometimes 
happen! This was all an affair of seconds. The 
next second there came something even odder. 

The man on the motor-cycle, turning once more 
to the girl in the carrier, leant over, shot out a 
hand, seized her by the shoulder and shook her as a 
terrier shakes a rat. This before the eyes of the 
young man in the approaching car who, seeing this 
thing, could hardly believe that he was seeing it. 

Then he, that hefty brute on the motor-cycle, 


HE MEETS THE GIRL 


9 


did it again. No mistaking it this time. Shook 
the girl, in savage anger, so that her hat fell side- 
ways upon her neck, and her hair tumbled about 
her face; shook her . . . 

Good Lord. . . . 

They were now close upon the car. Young 
Laverock, horror-struck, staring, caught the voice 
of the other man, raised and furious. 

“ Get out of this. Hear what I say? Get out ” 

With a jerk the motor-cycle pulled up; the rider 
flung himself off, went round to the side of the 
carrier, and caught at the arm of the girl. She 
shrank aside. 

* c Get out , I say ! ” he threw at her. Then, 
roughly as a carter might drag at the bridle of a 
refractory horse, he clutched that slender arm, 
dragged the girl by force out of the carrier, pushed 
her to the side of the road. She stumbled; fell 
against a strip of dusty, clovered turf. Then in 
a moment she picked herself up. She stood; a 
tiny forlorn figure in cornflower-blue> against 
the May-green-and-gold of the hedge, holding out, 
in a helpless gesture, her hands towards the 
man — all this in far less time, indescribably, than 
it takes to tell. Already the brute had grasped 
the handle-bars again, had taken a running step 
beside his bicycle, had thrown himself on, with 
never a glance behind. Sharply he turned off to 
the right, dashed down a lane between elms. 

The girl still kept that gesture of despair towards 
his departing back, calling him with the turn of 
her body, the tilt of her head as much as with tho 
tone of her voice. Anguished, she sobbed after him 
one word. 


10 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


“ Arthur! ” 

He had rattled out of eight, even as young 
Laverock, pulling up the car, had sprung out, and 
come on to the scene. 

What else, I ask you, would any young man 
have done? Here ’was* a girl, brutally treated by 
something that called itself a man, who deserted 
her in a lonely lane at cross-roads, miles from 
anywhere. . . . The limit. . . . 8hoolc her. . . . 
Turned her out of the side-car. Chucked her out 
upon the road. The absolute limit. . . . Tense 
with indignation, young Laverock clutched off his 
cap, and strode straight up to this damsel in 
distress. At that minute he neither knew nor 
cared who or what else she was; married to that 
brute, his daughter, or what. It didn’t strike 
him to wonder what “ the row ” had been about 
or why she should have been chucked into the 
hedge-row like a gipsy’s discarded tin can. He 
didn’t even — and this was rather worthy of remark 
in Archie Laverock — he didn’t think of noticing 
whether the girl were pretty or not. The first 
thing that came into his head he said, very 
decisively : 

“ Can I do anything? ” 

The girl turned upon him a small, startled face. 
Before she could speak, another factor was added 
to the situation. It was a tall, gaunt man in a 
white canvas coat, who strode through a gate in 
the hedge that young Laverock only then noticed 
as the entrance to a tiny inn, hiding behind great 
towers of lilac. 

u Here ! ” exclaimed this new-comer, very irri- 
tably, to Archie Laverock, “what do you think 


HE MEETS THE GIRL 11 

you’re doing here? Will you be so good as to clear 
out o’ the way, please? ” 

Young Laverock cast upon this individual one 
swift detached glance. He disliked the look of him, 
also the manner. Further, a faint aura of whisky 
about him mingled with the sun-warmed arrogance 
of the lilacs about the door, and it was not neces- 
sary that the new-comer should have anything to 
say in this matter of a girl flung aside upon the 
King’s Highway. Get her away from here, that 
was the main thing. Young Laverock, turning to 
her again, said in the voice of gentle authoritative- 
ness, “Get into that car of mine, won’t you? I’ll 
drive you where you want to go.” 

He believed that the girl — still seeming dazed 
and all taken aback — began to murmur something 
confusedly about “very kind ” 

Then came the “ Pup-pup-pup ” of that motor- 
cycle again. . . . Good Lord! What? Was that 
chap coming back? (“Arthur? ”) Yes, by Jove; 
here he was, signalling to the girl as he dashed up 
the road again calling out “ Hi ! ” 

Having practically knocked her down, the brute 
was now ordering the girl to come back to him, 
was he? 

“ Neck ! ” thought young Laverock, so hot with’ 
honest indignation that he didn’t think clearly. 
He was just angry and set. At the back of his 
mind lowered a vague determination to come back 
and settle with those two men afterwards. They 
seemed to belong together. Blighters! they’d 
probably both been drinking, he decided in a rush. 
That was it. Meanwhile the main thing was to 
get that girl safely away. 


12 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


Archie Laverock took a half -pace backwards; 
held open the door of the little Standard. A very 
personable young rescuer lie looked as he stood 
there, tall and lightly built under the well-worn 
trench-coat, the afternoon sunlight making of his 
small smooth head a gilded knob, lighter in tone 
than the tan of his face. This was clean-shaven 
and pleasant, with a gleam of teeth and eyes; the 
characteristic, the unmistakable Rover’s-eyes — 
which at this point there is no time to describe. 
. . . We’ll come to that later. 

“ Get in,” he said briskly to the girl. 

? She looked as if she didn’t know if she were 
going to laugh hysterically or what; poor little 
soul. 

; u Get in. There. That’s right.” 

She looked back, in a hesitant, over-her-slioulder 
way at the lilac-embow T ered inn, but she allowed 
young Laverock to bundle her, masterfully, into 
the car. Just as he took the wheel, that brute 
on the motor-cycle dashed up alongside. 

“ Here, where are you going? ” he called out 
sharply. The car leapt forward as the girl called 
back, “ It’s all right, Arthur! So long! ” whether 
in bravado or triumph young Laverock did not 
determine. With a curious little running laugh 
in her voice she added, her words caught away on 
the breeze, “ I finish with you, next time, you 
know. ...” 

A pretty mild threat, considering what had just 
happened, thought young Laverock. What on 
earth had that scene been about, anyhow? It is 
women who are said to be the Inquisitive Sex; 
no woman could have seethed with more comx>lete 


HE MEETS THE GIRL 


13 

curiosity than did this young man who drove the 
escaping girl. He kept that curiosity strictly 
behind the mask, pleasant-featured and tanned, 
of his face. But . . . would she explain? 
Presently? 

Meantime he inquired, perfectly matter-of-fact, 
“ Straight ahead, is it?” 

u Yes, straight on, please,” replied the meek 
little voice of the girl beside him, “if you’re going 
to be kind enough to drive me home.” 

“ Of course. Anywhere you say.” 

u About two miles straight ahead then, please. 
Then when we come to the green between the two- 
ponds you bear to the left, and— oh, I’ll tell you 
when we come to it.” 

“ Right.” 

The little two-seater (brought out on such a 
different errand!) sped forward between hedges 
that streamed behind in scarves of emerald or jade, 
patterned here and there by the golden cascade 
of laburnum, the snowdrift of mock-orange, the 
amethyst glow of rhododendrons glimpsed in groves 
beyond some gate ; and as the car hurried smoothly 
ahead, young Laverock hesitated to speak. He 
wondered what he ought to say, or if he ought to 
say anything; whether sympathy were expected or 
an offer of further help, or whether he had better 
wait for this poor little soul beside him to refer 
to what had happened. . . . Not a word came 
from her. ... If she meant him to ignore every- 
thing, very well. . . . 

Young Laverock possessed a rather exceptional 
faculty for feeling, guessing, or arriving in some 
way very quickly at the preferences of the woman 


14 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


with whom he happened at the moment to be. 
(“What she’d like me t.o do next/’ in fact. Few 
young men, however sterling, are really first-rate 
at this.) He, quite shortly, became conscious that 
the girl beside him wished him to take the ini- 
tiative. He must mention that quite horrible little 
incident on the roadside outside that peaceful 
looking rural inn. 

He did so. 

Careful not to look at her lest she should be 
confused or distressed, he began, still as matter- 
of-fact as if he were asking her if she could drive 
a car herself, “ I say, I hope very much that you 
didn’t mind my butting in like that just now by 
the inn. It seemed to me the only thing to be done. 
I hoped it was all right ” 

(As if he’d had time to hope or think anything 
so definite.) 

“ Oh ! It was so kind of you. Thank you, very 
much indeed,” replied the girl in that primmest 
of little voices. 

Non-committal in the extreme, her voice. Evi- 
dently determined to give nothing away, he 
thought. Something, however, its least tone did 
betray. Poor child, she was, in the Language of 
Past Ages, a Lady. In that horrible situation? 
She— having anything to say to an unspeakable 
cad like that bully on the bike? What was she 
doing in that gal ere — in that side-car — at all? 
Why wasn’t she being looked after better than 
that? young Laverock mentally demanded of the 
Surrey scenery as framed by the wind-screen. 
What were her people? (Presumably he would 
see her people presently, since she had said, “ kind 


HE MEETS THE GIRL 15 

enough to drive me home.”) What were they think- 
ing about? 

He next realized that the girl herself had a 
question to ask. 

She turned to him the little head, blue as that 
of a kingfisher, in the close, concealing hat. 
Still demurely, but with an odd touch of something 
in her voice that he could not place, she demanded, 
“ What did you think of it? ” 

He took his eyes from the evenly-rolling-out 
ribbon of the road ahead. Vivid as a rain-washed 
pink carnation, her small face against blue clouds of 
tulle! but he, disconcerted by the suddenness of 
her question, had even yet not seen her except as 
a human being in some unexplained “mess.” At 
a loss for the moment, he marked time by repeating 
blandly, “ Think of it? ” 

She nodded. She sounded, now, self-possessed. 
“Yes; I mean, what did you think was hap- 
pening? When you saw Arthur Seymour fling 
me out of that car on to the road just now? 

Weren’t you surprised ” 

“ Surprised — I should rather think I ” 

“Yes; I saw you were frightfully angry; sweet 
of you! I suppose any decent sort of man would 
have been,” she took up quickly; her soft voice 
had a “ twittering ” quality now, like that of some 
small disturbed bird. “ It must have looked 
rather — ghastly. To come upon it suddenly like 
that! What did you make of it? You saw a girl 

like me — if you noticed what I was like at all ” 

Here Archie Laverock did for the first time 
glance at this stranger from the point of view of 
what she was like to look at. 


16 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


She was pretty. By Jove, slie was more than 
pretty in her brilliantly blonde style. Not a curl 
showing now . . . she sat with hands to the veil 
that she was readjusting. A riotous wisp of it 
blew across her face and chin. Above the veil, 
below the brim of the casque, sparkled the bluest 
eyes that Archie Laverock had ever seen. These 
w r ere fringed by lashes long, curly, and black. . . . 
Too black. A pity, thought young Laverock, that 
this wonderfully pretty little creature had so over- 
done the make-up ! 

Like most men of his day, he had absolutely no 
objection to a touch of the black and pink, the 
cream and carmine, which a woman “ puts on ?? in 
the same spirit as she stitches the vividly-coloured 
satin flower to her hat. Either is to adorn, not to 
deceive. Further, he was educated up to realizing 
that with a certain type of French hat or of vivid 
evening-gown, the wearer must accentuate her ow T n 
colouring, or “ put out ” the wdiole look of wdiat 
she wears, and become inartistic, incongruous, 
too conspicuous. . . .The love of any kind of 
Beauty (wdiether of Art or Nature) presupposes 
a gift for the Apropos ; or, the Right Thing at the 
Right Time and Place. But never gossamer silk 
stockings, say, with golf-kit. The woman who had 
taught young Laverock so much (she w^ent out 
of his story long before v r e begin it) w-ould have 
shuddered at the thought of doing-up one's eye- 
lashes “ in threes ” with a thick black bead of 
mastic at the end of each trio, before going for 
a spin in the country. Why had this girl done 
that? All wrong! All — 


HE MEETS THE GIKL 


17 


Here a fresh toss of the breeze sent that end 
of tulle across his own face, bringing him a faint 
waft of scent. Different from the all -permeating 
perfume of that afternoon, from the breath of a 
myriad growing things (young grasses, young 
beech-leaves, young uncurling bracken-fronds) that, 
mingling with the pervading, the unceasing sigh 
of her pine-woods, makes the essence of Surrey in 
spring. This other scent he could have 
named, having once sent a huge bottle of it as 
a thank-offering to a Y.A.D. girl who had nursed 
him. 

It was Mysterieuse. Appropriate enough to this 
other girl! 

She caught the veil back, tied it under her little 
egg-shaped chin. . . . Perfect, that pink oval of 
her jaw; the whole lower part of her face 
exquisitely chiselled and defined. . . . Too defined. 
Here again she’d overdone it. Her short upper-lip 
had its curve violently exaggerated with sticky 
pigment of a peculiarly dark browny-red, with 
which was accentuated also the shell-like detail 
of her nostrils. Yet, for all that, the authentic 
prettiness of her, the fresh youth, were things to 
hit a man between the eyes — or to the heart. 

Archie Laverock was thus hit, and at that 
moment. 

Down he went like a nine-pin to this so-far- 
nameless young woman, her whole being sur- 
rounded by a puzzle, as was her face by the mist 
of cornflower blue that she had at last folded to 
lie firm and flat above her eyes, against her cheeks. 
In that head-dress she looked a fair and subtle 


18 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


Sphinx-girl indeed, and he was her captive as much 
as he had ever been that of any woman. He, as 
it often happens, did not know this was the case 
until later — ah, much later on. 

Meantime her voice persisted in his ear. “ Yes* 
I want to know exactly what you thought was 
happening just now? It might have looked like 
several things, mightn’t it?” She seemed to put the 
words into the mouth of the young man at the 
wheel. “ For instance, did you see me as one of 
those girls who stay at country-houses and who 
play bridge recklessly and lose, and simply have 
to have money to meet their debts of honour, and 
get into the toils (toils is the right word, isn’t it?) 
of money-lenders? Did you see Arthur as the 
relentless money-lender whom I was trying to 
implore to give me a little more time? ” 

In a sudden, inexplicable relief that this was no 
worse, young Laverock exclaimed, “That was it, 
was it? ” 

Without answering this, the girl twittered on, 
“ Or did you think it was a drama of jealousy? 

Arthur, my exacting fiance ” 

Before he knew, young Laverock had blurted out 
in consternation, “ Is he your fiance t ” 

“ Did he look like that? Or more like my rather 
elderly suspicious husband ? ” 

“ Your husband f No ! I mean — Is he? Is he? ” 
“ Couldn’t you,” the Sphinx-girl countered, 
“ couldn’t you have seen that? ” 

Young Laverock had no breath to say that at 
his first glimpse of the pair on the bike and in 
the side-car, he had taken them, vehemently wran- 
gling as they were, for a married couple. In fact,. 


HE MEETS THE GIRL 


19 


this he forgot in his shock of genuine horror. This 
sweet litle thing? A lady? a perfectly nice girl? 
a mere child? Tied to that drunkard hound of a 
husband who knocked her about? 

Curt with anger and shock, he blurted out, “ How 
should I have known what to think ?” 

“Well, think now. Reconstruct the scene in 
your mind. Will you? I want you to. I’ve a 
reason/’ put in the girl’s quick, bird-like voice. 
u Tell me what it looked like. ‘ A drama of Love 
and Jealousy? ’ ‘ The Interrupted Elopement ?’ 

‘In Shylock’s Grip?’ Which?” 

But at least five seconds before she stopped 
speaking the young man’s mind had leapt to the 
meaning of all this. 

“ Ha, you’ve been pulling my leg,” he cried out 
with a sudden boyish grin that creased his tanned 
cheeks into two deep dimples, and showed the 
even line of his strong teeth, white as the split 
halves of almonds. “I see it now! I see!” 

Her eyes danced ; flashed into his. u Yes, but 
do you? ” 

“ I do.” He laughed out. “ Of course. Ass that 
I was not to spot the camera in the hedge! Must 
have been clicking away all the time there, w T asn’t 
it? No wonder your friend in the white coat got 
so furious with me for butting in! Of course ! 
Films! Cinema acting! You were detailed to 
put through — or whatever they call it — a scene for 
a film play ! ” 

She nodded delightedly. “ You’ve guessed it at 
last, have you? It was really almost as filmy as 
the film itself, the way you swooped down because 
you thought I was in difficulties, and carried me 


20 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


away before I could dash into the Inn for a dab 
of cold cream to take off my make-up ! ” 

“ Em awfully sorry, but ” 

“ Oh, I loved it,” the film heroine assured him. 
“ Sydney’d just finished for the day. He was the 
operator, the man in the white coat. Old Arthur 
good old has-been, awfully good-natured !— was 
my husband, in the play. He had to desert me 
brutally at the cross-roads, where he imagined I 
had arranged to meet his good-looking young 
cousin, only of course he’d got him gagged and 
bound in the cellars of the Unicorn since day -break, 
and — oh, well, you’ll have to go to the Trade show 
next month, and see the whole story. There’s 
miles — I mean, there’s reels and reels of it. ‘ The 
Billionaire’s Bride ’ it’s called — no, I forget the 
exact name. Oh, but you’ve no idea what the poor 
young bride (me) has to go through. Locked 
up; starved; escaping though windows; dropping 
from aeroplanes. . . . Quite enough to put any- 
body off married life,” she twittered blithely, “ if 
that one film gives you the least foreshadowing? 

Or aren’t you married, Mr. Don’t you think 

it would be a good idea if we knew each other’s 
names? ” 

“ Heaven forbid! — I mean, that I should ever 
be married,” the Rover laughingly explained to 
her. “ My name’s Laverock.” 

“ Captain ? ” 

“ Not any longer, thanks be.” 

“ Mr. Laverock. Rather pretty. It means i A 
lark,’ doesn’t it? ” she tossed off lightly. 

She had dropped her camouflage of primness 
now; having sized-up this young man’s quality to 


HE MEETS THE GIEL 


21 


her girl-standard of “ a gentleman and nice,” she 
talked with the bubbling gaiety of a school-girl on 
holiday — but also with the touch of imperiousness 
that marks the woman sure of her reception. 
She’d had her share of petting and spoiling 
wherever she’d been, he could have told; the note 
of “ The Only Girl ” sounded in her voice as she 
ordered prettily, “ Tell me about yourself. What 
do you do now? Nothing, I suppose.” 

The young man gave a rueful grunt. “ Nothing? 
As it happens I work like a black. Lucky to get 
the chance to. There are no jobs in this blessed 
country any more. Anyhow not for fellows like 
me who’ve had five years cut straight out of their 
lives just at the time when they’re supposed to 
be learning how to make their bread and butter.” 

“ Your bread and butter,” the girl took up on 
an amused note, “ includes quite a decent little 
car of your own ; she runs deliciously ” 

u She does, but — Oh, Lord, did you think this 
was my own car? ” retorted the man at the wheel 
with a chuckle for the mistake which had been 
made more than once in the course of his new 
career. “ A bad guess, my dear lady. This is 
not the fruits of the job, I can tell you. This is 
The Job itself.” 

“ You mean you sell cars?” 

“ I’m attached to a firm that does,” he explained. 
“ The eldest son there was a pal of mine on the 
Somme; he was very decent indeed to me after I 
came out of hospital when the doctor told me 
I’d got to have life in the open for a couple of 
years. He, my pal, suggested that I should take 
on this job, trying out the cars for various clients, 


22 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


so here I am. This is the maiden trip of the little 
Standard. Rather an eventful one, was not it? ” 

“ I hope I brought her luck,” said the girl mu- 
singly. “You know how superstitious we theat- 
rical people are about mascots, and dreams, and 
the lucky day of the week, and all that sort of 
thing.” 

The tone in which she said “ we theatrical 
people” was delightful. What? New, he thought. 
He was ready to bet that this child (she didn’t 
look more than nineteen) had not been very long 
on either the stage or the screen. Yet — where had 
he seen before that egg-shaped face, those daintily- 
defined features, given character by the smile of 
school-girl enjoyment that danced from big eyes 
to curly mouth? Her portrait must have been 
in some recent Eve or Tatler, he thought. Gently 
he reminded her — 

“Were you going to let me know your name?” 

She made a tiny, stagey pause. 

Then came the announcement that drew from 
the young man a “By Jove” of impressed recog- 
nition. For with a tremor in her voice of genuine 
delight, showing how still fresh to her was the 
bloom on the golden fruit, she uttered a name 
familiar that spring to all breakfasting England; 
all, that is over three million people who took in 
a certain illustrated paper. 

She said, “ I am Lucy Joy.” 


CHAPTER TWO 


POCKET VENUS 

“ A full-born Beauty, new and exquisite ! ” 

— Keats. 

I IKE the rest of the public, young Laverock 
, had stared, two months before, at the big 
half-tone photograph in the Daily Periscope 
of the girl who had won their “ Prettiest English- 
woman ” competition. 

“ Miss Lucy J oy. First Prize. 

One Thousand Pounds.” 

“ Easy money for just sending in a snap-shot, 
and then attending the judges’ lunch at the Berke- 
ley,” had been the comment of his pal, the son 
of that motor-car firm who had got him his job. 
u Let’s have a look at the young woman. H’m. 
I don’t see that she’s anything so desperately won- 
derful, according to this. Not even as pretty as 
the second-prize girl. Nose too short. Not a 
patch on the Daily Mirror winner.” 

“ You can’t tell by a picture,” Archie Laverock 
had said. “ Probably her colouring’s half the 
battle; it is with most English girls.” 

“Most of these wenches here seem to me as 
plain as Potiphar’s wife,” grumbled Archie’s pal. 

He was one of these men invariably captious 
and grudging on the subject of women’s looks, 

23 


24 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


being liimself without an isolated advantage of 
feature or figure. Archie Laverock, on the other 
hand, was of those who honestly consider that 
practically any girl is attractive looking, that most 
are definitely pretty, and that there isn’t such a 
thing as a really ugly woman to be found in this 
world. For him, to be feminine at all was to be 
desirable. It is your handsome critic who is 
indulgent. With all his faults, the Rover was a 
creature not — unsightly. 

“ Bit of a job, selecting the first ten out of this 
bunch,” he’d mused over the full page of portraits 
of the best Types of Britain’s Girlhood, and then 
picking out the nicest-looking nymph of the Great 
Ten ! “ I’m bothered if I know "how I should have 
voted. ... I wonder what sort of girl this Miss 
Lucy J oy is like to talk to, and what sort of people 
and home she’s got, and all that sort of thing. ...” 

Now, two months later on, he was to know. 

In wondering what the Prize-Beauty’s home and 
family would be like, he had certainly not formed 
any mental picture of the menage into which he 
found himself practically tumbled by the hand of 
Fate that afternoon, directly the car had drawn 
up, on the grassy side-track sprinkled with fir- 
cones, outside a gate with white palings. 

Outside was the Surrey wild; turf, broom, what- 
would-become-heather, new bracken, sandy slopes, 
and, all beyond; the pine-woods, seeming to shake 
slow dark heads over the ways of the world and 
to sigh without ceasing, “'Hush . . . hush ...” 

“ Here’s the place,” said Lucy Joy, pointing to 
the gate. 


POCKET VENUS 


25 


Inside the palings was a gay little oasis, enough. 
Presently, to Archie’s eyes, it resolved itself into 
a flower-garden, a lawn, a rockery bright with 
Alpine plants, a flight of shallow red steps leading 
up to a wooden bungalow, painted sky-blue, but 
half-hidden by a tangle of light creepers, variegated 
honey-suckle, sweet-briar rioting up to the chim- 
neys of the place. At the first glance, however, 
the confusing colour and flutter were not to be 
disposed of in these literal terms; the place was 
just a bouquet ablaze with pinks and blues and 
golds and oranges and mauves. The eye would 
have been puzzled to distinguish between glowing 
splashes of colour that blazed between the bushes! 
A huge, poppy-patterned tent-parasol was set up on 
the lawn between the flower beds. Under this, on 
the backing of smooth green grass lay a spread of 
cushions boldly striped in lemon-and-amber and 
black that made a brighter contrast of the rest. 
There were, besides, chintz padded basket-chairs 
and Indian rugs; a dazzle-painted workbox from 
which effloresced a pinky heap of flimsy needlework, 
a half -knitted jumper in Russian-ballet shades; 
there were a flung-aside Pan, its pages a-flutter 
in the breeze, a couple of paper -jacketed novels; 
a canary-and-cream check teacloth was laid beneath 
the gleam of silver, of flowery china ; around it was 
grouped wind-tossed clusters of women’s summery 
frills. Above all sounded the gay commotion of 
voices, twittering as zestfully, as incessantly as 
the birds then in full Spring song. 

“ Ah ! They’re in. They’re all at tea in the 
garden. Good! Come and be introduced to the 
family,” said Lucy Joy. 


26 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


Tossing aside the dust-rug, she skipped from 
the car, small fingers resting for an instant in the 
long tanned ones held out by the Rover — Just the 
fateful fraction of a second quicker than he’d shown 
this ordinary attention to any girl yet. He noticed 
it himself. . . . 

Quickly he followed at the grey suede heels of 
the tiny blue-wrapped figure stepping down the 
path, past a huge blossoming tree-lupin, past 
budding larkspurs that towered above her, round 
the corner of the lawn. 

“ Hullo,” she called, in a tone that was as the 
clapping of pretty hands by some Eastern Queen 
to summon slaves. 

They were about her immediately. In a second 
she seemed to be surrounded by a crowd of people 
and a pack of up-leaping, welcoming dogs. The 
bright hubbub of voices broke out — 

“ Here she is ! Already ” 

u My pet ! We never heard the car ” 

“ Hallo, Lu! hul — lo ” 

Miss Lucy Joy disengaged herself from the em- 
brace of another small, golden-haired girl in a very 
French summer-frock of rose-mauve dappled with 
big sulphur-yellow moons, and turned to her guest 
the Rover, hovering on the outskirts of the group. 
Already to his dazzled vision it had dwindled into 
a trio only. Two frocks and a suit of flannels. 
Three dogs; an Airedale, a white West Highland 
terrier, a small black fluffy puppy. One cat. A 
parrot sitting on the top of its cage, set near the 
sundial. 

“My menagerie!” announced Lucy Joy, in im- 
perious, spoilt school -girl tones. She seemed sud- 


POCKET VENUS 


27 


Reilly “ herself” as slie had not yet appeared to 
the Arrant Rover. “ This/' she added to the group, 
“ is Mr. Laverock who has driven me home. 
Mummie ! ” 

To Archie’s amazement there turned to him with 
smiles that blonde u girl ” in the rose-mauve 
muslin. . . . How do some women do it? For, 
yes, she was the mother of this Five-foot-nothing' 
of Feminity who obviously owned the place. Any- 
body would have taken her for a sister only a few 
years older. . . . 

“ My Auntie Madge, Mrs. Harrison ” 

This lady again might have been the married 
sister of both, slim and petite, charmingly dressed 
in black and white jazz- voile and a big hat with 
a transparent orange halo through which one 
caught softened peeps of just the profile of the 
celebrated niece. . . . Good looks all over the 
family ! 

“ Frankie. My little brother ” 

How obviously so! The last-introduced member 
of the family was a creature with the silk-smooth, 
peach-pink face of a very young lad topping the 
body of a big man, still growing. In spite of the 
white flannels that shrank away from the large 
ankles and wrists and throat of him, any one 
could have “ seen ” him in his usual wear of blue 
Naval cloth, white-collar and black tie. The 
Snotty Unmistakable grinned from eyes blue as 
his sister’s, and rang in the deep but still unsettled 
voice with which he sang out, “ Well, darling, 
brought home one of your many husbands to-day? ” 
“ This isn’t one of my husbands at all, as it 
happens. This is the gallant rescuer who — well — 


28 


THE ARRANT ROVER 

< End of Part Eight; Part Nine will follow imme- 
diately : We’ll tell you all about that presently. 
Tea first, now ” ordered the girl, dropping down 
among the prismatic cushions of the chair that had 
just been vacated by the coltish limbs of her 
brother. “ Frankie, seize this ” — she took off and 
tossed into his hands the amusing little casque 
and veil of cornflower-blue ; her silky shock of hair 
gleamed forth, palest gilt in the sun. “ And this, 
dear ” 

This was the blue wrap; her frock below showed 
the slimmest of white arms through pearl-coloured 
georgette. 

“Now!” she sighed, content. “ Mummie, did 
old Sir Stiek-in-the-Mud send over those peaches? 
Good! (Down, Puppety, down!)' Auntie, make 
Mr. Laverock begin with sandwiches; I’m sure 
he’s fainting with fatigue and exhaustion after all 
the shocks and spasms of this hectic after- 
noon ” 

“ Are you acting for the films, too, then, Mr. 
Laverock? ” inquired the girlish Mummie with so 
much of the voice and mannerism of her daughter 
even more lavishly italicized that Archie nearly 
laughed aloud. 

“ No; I’m not in that line at all,” he began his 
explanation. “ As a matter of fact I didn’t know 
your daughter was either, at the time. I just 
butted in because I imagined she was in diffi- 
culties ” 

“ In difficulties Oh, Lu ! Darling ! These 

dreadful people you have to work with ” cried 

Mummie, stricken. “ Oh, what was it ” 

“ Mummie! It wasn’t anything! ” 


POCKET VENUS 


29 


“ But Mr. Laverock said ” * 

“ It was all my silly idiocy ” began Archie 

again. “ I ” 

“ No, I'm sure it wasn’t. You’d know,” he was 
assured by the Auntie, with the look of one who 
knew this sort of man from the other. “ What 
was it? Who was annoying her? ” 

“ Nobody at all. My poor Lambs, I wish you'd 
listen instead of always talking down everybody ! ” 
the girl exclaimed petulantly. “ Can’t you under- 
stand that I was just finishing rehearsing * A 
Honeymoon Horror / or whatever it is, with 

Arthur Seymour, when ” 

She twittered through the breathless expla- 
nation, its end cut off by guffaws from the brother 
and a chorus from Mummie and Auntie of “ Well, 
but I think that was perfectly street of him ! ” 

“ Yes, rushing in ■” 

“'Where Angels fear to tread!” (from Frankie 
immediately clapping an apologetic hand over his 

own pink mouth). “ Never mind, I’m just as 

grateful to you as if my Pet had been in need of 
help, Mr. Laverock! By the way; Laverock . . . 
Madgie, didn't we know a Captain Laverock in 
the R.E.? ” 

“ My uncle,” began Archie, “ was in ” 

“ Of course we knew him quite well ! How 
small the world ” 

The parrot contributed a piercing screech, 
harped on the wires of its cage; and gurgled, 
“What a life! What a life!” 

“ We shall all have to go on the films presently 
if we want to have anything to eat ! ” declared 
the Snotty through a mouthful of eclair. 


30 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


u Mummie, I'm going to chuck the Navy. Hid I 
tell you, Mummie darling? Going on the films 
with my well-known sister. They’d have me in a 
minute; give me sixty quid a week for just coming 
on and looking like Lu ! ” 

Here a large wink from the sea-blue eye nearest 
the visitor. 

“ I say, wilt try one of these chocolates, Mr., 
Laverock? ” He handed a satin box rather larger 
than a hassock. “ Are these from the infatuated 
General, Lu? What a judge! I shall wangle him 


“ Frankie, don’t talk the whole time, nobody 
else gets a wmrd in ! ” remonstrated the pretty 
Aunt. In vain. The Snotty’s half-broken baritone 
held forth. 

“ What it is to be a celebrity’s brother ! By Jove, 
d’you know I can jolly well do anything I like 
in our wardroom these last tw r o months, just 
because everybody in the ship, from Skipped down, 
is so mad keen to get an introduction ! D’you know 
what I’ve planned for the next Albert Hall Dance? 
I’m going as Miss Lucy Joy, the Daily Periscope 
Beauty Competition Winner. Anybody ’d take me 
for her in a dinky hat and a side-curl and an 
evening skirt by Elspeth Phelps — wouldn’t they 
take me for her, Mummie? ” 

“ Oh, yes! Wouldn’t they take him for me!” 
in mock indignation from the girl. “ Especially 
about the hands and feet ! Wouldn’t they ! ” 

“ I can get into your shoes, Miss ! Bet you I 

can get into your shoes ” 

“ Oh! ” 

She and the sixteen-year-old brother squabbled 


POCKET VENUB 


31 


and ruffled it like two fighting blue-tits; Archie, 
amused and enjoying, tried to keep up with their 
laughing dispute through the piercing cries of 
the parrot, the barked appeals of the puppy for 
more cake, and the two simultaneous monologues 
now in full swing from Munimie and Auntie, each 
directed at the guest. 

“ Isn’t it wonderful about Lucy ! ” the mother 
began as if to an old family friend. “ You see, 
it’s not only looks. It is talent as well. Everybody 
knows it’s talent. Everybody says she’s the coming 
Mary Pickford ” 

The Aunt was prattling proudly. “ I shall 
always say I began it. I did say, ‘ We might as 
well send in a photograph of Lucy, she’s much 
prettier than any of those pictures in Elwin 
Neames’ of languishing minxes wandering in hay- 
fields, dressed in chiffon motor-veils,’ and they 
all laughed, but I would send it — the photograph 
Frankie took of her in the punt, just an amateur 
snapshot! But I always say ” 

“ You know,” the mother babbled, “ none of 
us had ever been on the Stage or anything! Just 
the most ordinary people who’ve always gone 
straight into the Army or the Navy because their 
people have never done anything else! ” 

Archie nodded; his own people had been like 
that. 

“No influence or anything, ours hadn’t. Just 
were beloved by their men, did their duty, got 
killed very bravely, dear things! and all that. 
Nobody ever heard of any of her family either on 
her father’s side,” the Aunt told Archie, “ or ours. 
We’d never any ‘ pull ’ ; never knew anybody more 


32 THE ARRANT ROVER 

important than just the Colonel of the regiment, j 
. . .And now! Everybody! Staff, Foreign Office, j 
people in Downing Street. . . . The world AND | 
his wife! Literally everybody in London wants 1 
to know us ! ” 

“ No end of grand people suddenly remembering 
they were at Sandhurst with poor Tom, or that 
they’d once met us when we went over to see 
Frankie at Dartmouth!” took up the mother. 

“ The child goes everywhere , invited everywhere. 

. . . Flocks of people as rich as Croesus, yes, and 
nice people, too, making such a fuss of her ! Ever 
since the portrait came out in the papers, and the 
interviews, and the paragraphs about all those 
offers from cinema firms! It’s been almost too 
much. She scarcely has a moment to herself apart 
from her work. Never was a girl so feted, on the 
stage or off. For the last two months she’s been 
just The Rage ! ” 

This Archie Laverock could believe. He glanced 
at this household idol sitting among her cushions 
with the wdnd in her hair, the sun on her face, 
painted, yet unspoilt ; her brother was still teasing 
her, but in all adoration ; the dogs at her feet still 
kept worshipful eyes fastened upon her; still, still 
her mother and aunt sang her praises and the 
young man, listening, was taken back to that mo- 
ment when he had found himself putting out a 
hand to help her ’light from his car, more quickly 
than even he had ever performed that courtesy for 
any woman yet. 

Suddenly, instinctively, he knew that for this 
Cynosure-girl here, there must be always a “ sur- 
round ” of masculine hands held out just that 


POCKET VENUS 


33 


quarter-second more readily than for other women. 
Hands, waiting eagerly beside the car, the launch, 
the doors of the Ritz; hands to hold her wraps, 
to help put her furs about her, to proffer sheaves 
of flowers. Hands always, always at once. . . . 
She carried the atmosphere of that sort of thing 
about with her, he thought; was it because she 
was the Beauty Prize-winner? Or was she the 
Beauty Prize-winner because of it? 

“ Ppring ” sounded a telephone bell through 

the open window of the blue-painted bungalow. 
Frankie broke off his teasing to bolt in three strides 
up the shallow steps; then bellowed back through 
the garlanded window, “ It’s for you, Lu ! London 
call. Something about that supper-party ” 

“ Another supper-party ! ” sighed the mother in 
pretended disapproval as the girl sprang up and 
disappeared. “ ‘ What a life ! 9 indeed ! And we 
thought we’d a gay time as girls, Madgie. Even 
though we were always as hard-up as we could 
stick and never seemed to go out with anybody 
except young men who hadn’t a penny either, we 
didn’t, did we? As for these sumptuous restau- 
rants and princely presents ” 

“ A brooch made out of ‘ his ’ regimental 

badge and a sixpenny ice at Gunter’s ” 

“And as for clothes! Blouses by Hourne and 
Bollingsworth, skirt by Nurse ! ” enlarged the 
Mummie who was a girl in King Edward’s time. 
“ D’you know this summer is literally the first 
time I’ve ever had on a tub-frock out of South 
Molton Street ! ” 

She gazed happily down at the rose-mauve 
muslin with its yellow moons, and added a paren- 


34 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


thesis which the Rover had already heard from 
more than one (or two or three) of her sex — - 
“ I can’t think why I’m telling you all this, Mr. 
Laverock, but we seem to have known you for 

years! The first thing the darling said when 

she got the Periscope cheque was, ‘ Nice clothes 
for all of us.’ And we shopped — Oh ! ! ! A man,” 
she sighed faintly, “ could never understand quite 
what that means ” 

“ Wilt smoke? ” broke in the voice of Frankie, 
returning with a silver box to proffer. “ These 
are from another of Lu’s latest ; I shall never have 
to buy another cigarette ! What it is to be a — — ” 
“ Of course note the very best * houses ’ are all 
clamouring to dress her,” from Auntie. “ The 
simplest things, of course ; always the dearest ! ” 
“ The fewer you go the higher ! ” declared the 
irrepressible Frankie; while his girlish parent 
added. “ Clothes were never as becoming as they 
are now; that’s partly why the nowadays girl is 
so awfully pretty, don’t you think so, Mr., 
Laverock? ” 

Here Archie Laverock, while she paused for 
breath, got his first chance. One compliment after 
thirty-five scores higher than two proposals at 
twenty — as he’d been told. He gave a telling 
glance at Mummie, fair-haired, animated, engaging, 
and he said quietly but with aim, “ What I think 
is, Mrs. Joy, that the time for a girl to start train- 
ing for Beauty-Competitions is — years before she 
gets born! ” 

Flushed, laughing disclaimers from Mrs. Joy 
(“Oh! Hasn’t he kissed the Blarney-stone! 
Flatterer ! How silly ! To a passee old thing like 


POCKET VENUS 


35 


me!”), but lie knew that he had pleased. He 
meant to. He had a position to keep as friend of 
this merry, feather-pated family. . . . 

All these other men who fluttered about this 
girl, who rang her up, made offerings, burnt 

incense How many of these were allowed, 

as it had been allowed to him to follow at those 
tiny, those grey su&de Louis heels of her right 
into the heart of this flowerful toy-Paradise that 
was her home? 

To that question an answer of sorts came at that 
moment. 

It took the form of the hoot of a Klaxon horn; 
the appearance beyond the shrubs and palings of 
another motor-car. A big green Bolls it was that 
banked up over the turfy ruts, driven by the 
smartest chauffeur who ever showed a cockade on 
his cap; a car containing four fat old men. . . . 

These were not the words in which others would 
have described the four immaculately turned-out 
gentlemen of mature age and distinguished ap- 
pearance, men honouring the Services and the Bar, 
who presently alighted and walked up the path. 
This was merely the hasty and ill-considered first 
impression of young Laverock as he sprang to his 
feet, and reconstructed the setting of chairs and 
cushions on the sunny, colourful lawn. Four fat 
old men. . . . 

“Oh! it’s the Admiral!” exclaimed Mummie 
agitato , wdth a forward flutter of rose-mauve 
draperies ; Auntie following her in a flash of magpie 
black-and-white, “Oh, how nice of you to come. 

... . And Sir George, isn’t it — No, Sir John, Sir 


36 THE ARRANT ROYER 

John — I don’t know why I always mix you all 
up . . . and General Gaynes, of course; how do 
you do? How do you do? Oh, yes; Lucy’s in; 
oh, I don’t know what her engagements are; don’t 
ask me!” A nervous laugh here; Mummie evi- 
dently not at her ease with the Admiral. . . . 

Yet he looked jovial enough of his four-square 
type. His “ no-nonsense-about-it ” eye was as blue 
as Frankie’s. In fact he might (thirty odd years 
ago) have looked not unlike young Frankie Joy. 
The Sea sets her hall-mark early on. To-day the 
characteristic Snotty-complexion of cream-and-rose 
was a mottled blend of brick-dust and gooseberry. 
Gone were the coltish lilt of the limbs, the swing 
and poise of slender flanks. He bulged. . . . But 
his suit (blue serge with a thin white line) was 
very perfect. So were his boots, his spats, the 
white slip to his waistcoat, his tie, his black pearl 
pin, his dove-grey hat, cocked just a trifle over 
one eye. In that eye and in those of his friends 
the General (Grey-green, Old Bill moustache and 
three chins) of the legal light, Sir John (monocle, 
and no neck), and of the fourth thirteen-stunner 
(one of these old limpets who stick on everywhere 
because the others have) in the eyes of all of them 
w^as a look of purpose. To see Miss Lucy Joy. 
Archie knew it. That’s what they’d come for. To 
fetch her away; blatantly. 

“ Sure, quite sure you’ve had tea? ” twittered 
Mummie. “ Then — Lu ! Lucy ! Darling ! ” 

The parrot on the top of its cage echoed pierc- 
ingly, “ Lu ! Lucy ! Darling ! . . . ” 

, “ Be quiet, Polly ! Frankie, bring out some 


POCKET VENUS 37 

drinks! Frankie! Lucy, what are you doing, 
my pet? Come out!” 

“ Can’t, Mummie! ” floated forth the clear petu- 
]ant voice from the second story. “ How can I 
possibly come out with my face all over whitewash? 
Frighten the Admiral.” 

“ I say ! What a horrible idea ! What are you 
whitewashing your face for, Miss Lucy?” The 
Admiral lifted up a resonant indulgent voice. 
“ ‘ Painting the Lily,’ eh? Why whitewash?” 

“ Because I must take my make-up off with 
something. It’s really ‘ the very best face cream.’ 
At least I say it is, in the advertisement I signed 
for it ! ” The imperious treble floated out again, 
to mingle with the clicking of glasses and siphons 
on the tray that was now being carried out by 
Frankie — a Frankie almost unrecognizable from 
the breezy chatter-box of five minutes before. 
Meek as a maid, mute as one of the cushions! 

Young Laverock, too, clad in the wdiole armour 
of restrained deference, decorated by much 
u Sir ”-ing of his seniors, was hiding thoughts that 
would have shocked and hurt those who know 
only the more charming attitudes of the young 
knight towards the scarred warrior. 

Nothing can be sweeter than the uplifted, hero- 
-worshipping glance of Youth to those on the 
pedestal of Years — with-a-Record. On the other 
hand, who can show a more pitiless search- 
light stare than Youth for Age seeking equal 
terms in the lists? 

“ Where’s Frankie?” screeched the parrot. 
“ What a life!” 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


38 

What the something, thought Archie Laverock, 
did these silly old buffers mean by bursting in to 
a party that was enjoying itself? Spoiling every- 
thing — because nobody there wanted them. Turn- 
ing the bubbling chatter of Mummie and Auntie 
into brightly-mechanical poodle-faking! Shutting 
up himself and the boy! Hating them, too, that 
he felt, somehow. . . . 

A woman had once told him, Laverock, that it 
always amused her to see the “ Dog ” of fifty- 
and-over confronted by subalterns and under- 
graduates. She’d said, “ The Dowager-Beauty 
may feel in eclipse beside this season’s pretty 
debutantes, but oh, Archie! the acute discomfort 
displayed by her husband in the presence of Hun- 
dred-Per-Cent young men! It's pathetic. . . .” 

Pathetic? Ridiculous, decreed Archie, that they 
couldn’t dodder off home now, in time to see their 
grandchildren put to bed, instead of — 

“We’d planned a little spree, if your Mother 
will let you come. So hurry up, Miss Lucy ! ” the 
Admiral called again from Archie’s abdicated chair. 
(“Oh, yes, my dear Mrs. Joy, I have a note for 
you from my sister to certify that the chaperoning 
element will be in full force, ha, ha. We’ll look 
after Miss Lucy, I promise you. We’ll take the 
very best care of her.”) Then louder, “Early 
dinner quite informally at my brother-in-law’s 
little place near Maidenhead. Then on to Murray’s 
as it’s going to be such a delightful evening. The 
River should be charming, and you said you loved 
dancing in the open ! ” 

Pleased, pretty laughter from within. “ But I’m 


POCKET VENUS 39 

supposed to be joining Lady Kichbourne’s party for 

supper, at the Carlton ” 

“Do it easily, do it easily/’ called bach the 
well-preserved old soldier sitting next to Mrs. 
Harrison. “ Just time for a dance each, and we’ll 
run you back to town on the dot. So put on your 

prettiest bib and tucker ” 

“My pink-and-silver lace?” coquettishly from 
the window. 

Chorus of Elders below: “Charming!” “Or 
why not the delightful little gauzy affair that 

we’d the pleasure of seeing last Wednesday ” 

“ or that blue < dernier cri 9 you wore at the 

rehearsal of your ' Spring Song 9 film, Miss Lucy ! ” 
suggested the Admiral. 

Him Archie considered rather worse than 
ridiculous. These elderly “ bloods ” ! On terms of 
discussing her pretty frocks with a girl like that? 
Taking her to dance at Murray’s? that apoplectic 
Leviathan with one foot in the grave, and the other, 
probably, gouty? All of them sitting waiting for 
her, blandly and complacently, as if they were the 
playfellows and contemporaries, and everybody 
else a negligible quantity? Why? Why? 

Just because they’d the chance to “do” her as 
she should be done. They’d the money. They’d the 
position. They, the Old Men, had been able to stop 
at home in positions of secure authority, piling 
prosperity on prosperity, while Young Men (cutting 
money-making possibilities clean out of their own 
lives) were keeping things safe . . . for those 
Over-Fifties. Up to now^, Archie Laverock had con- 
sidered in pretty poor taste those advertisements 


40 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


in The Bystander , boasting that a certain firm “ did 
not cater for old men ” Now, he thought Mr. 
Dennis Bradley put things too gently on the whole. 
Besides ... of course every firm catered for old 
men ! For them the best tailors, boot-makers, 
hair-dressers. For them the flats in Mount Street, 
the house in Belgrave Square. For them the chief 
seats at feasts. For them the shoots and race- 
meetings and the yachts and the gayest time going. 
For them, above all, the smiling society of the 
loveliest girls who might be their granddaughters ; 
yes, all the best of everything was all for them, 
every time. And in the mood of black resentment 
that it was so, every word of the talk still going 
on about him added exasperation to exasperation 
of a normally sunny young man. 

The climax was reached when at the reappear- 
ance of Miss Lucy Joy, all brocade cape from her 
egg-shaped chin to her feet (slim, iridescent and 
blue as the bodies of dragon flies), the Admiral 
cried, “ Ah, little one ! ” 

Little one ! Fatuous old fool, thought Archie. 

He knew himself that half this girl’s charm lay 
in the fact that she was miniature, almost under 
life-size. “Just as high as my heart ” enthused 
Orlando. “Little” has been Love's superlative 
ever since. “You Little Sportswoman” sighs the 
fiance of six-foot hockey-player, and, she, smiling 
down at him from the heights, knows that now 
indeed she has “got” him. Now Lucy Joy was 
authentically tiny to begin with. Scare! y an exag- 
geration, the Admiral’s comment when they were 
all packing into the Rolls, “ Almost unnecessary 


POCKET VENUS 41 

to waste a whole seat on Miss Lucy; she could so 
easily tuck into the pocket of my coat here ! ” 

No sooner was the motoring party oft (pocket 
Venus attended by her four Titans) than the strain 
above the garden-group lifted at once. Gestures, 
attitudes and voices changed with an abruptness. 
Frankie dropped into the seat that had been that 
of the Legal Light, flung his legs over the arm 
of it, tossed back his cherubically pretty head, 
and affected to swoon away; Mummie and Auntie, 
heaving sighs, partly of awe, partly of relief, 
turned to the one remaining guest. 

“ No, don’t go, Mr, Laverock; don’t! Stay 

and console her bereaved family ” 

“■ If you don’t mind just the rest of the 

cold beef; my sister’s rather a dab at salad ” 

“ I suppose ‘ Miss Lucy ’ will now be regaled 
with rivers of Bubbly and all the delicacies out 
of Season,” burst out Frankie, whose voice had 
been unheard except for demure “ say ivhen, Sirs 
since the irruption of the distinguished visitors. 
“ What it is to be an Old Man’s Darling! ” 

“ Oh, Frankie ! Don’t put things in such dread- 
ful ways , darling! ” besought his mother, gathering 
up the pink chaos of her needlework from the grass. 
u It’s so nice that the child should get on well 
with people who are really somebody, sort of, when 
her work has to bring her into contact with all 

sorts of impossible men ” 

Young Laverock secretly thought he rather pre- 
ferred Arthur Seymour of the motor-bike, and 
Sydney of the camera, to the Admiral and his 
friends. 


42 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


“ Men of that age certainly always do make a 
pet of Lucy ” Auntie began, collecting cushions. 

Mummie added, “ I don’t know how it is ! ” Her 
puzzled infantile gaze turned towards the figure, 
how gracefully-limbed! of the young man left 
amongst the empty glasses. He himself had 
declined a peg. “ When I was a girl I don’t think 
it would have amused me to dance with quite such 
— I mean men of such senior ranks. It’s a good 
thing it does amuse the child. They’re able to do 
so much for her, of course, and to give her (as 

she says) such a wonderful time. But ” she 

hesitated as if before saying something daring, “ I 
don’t feel I should ever have looked at the Admiral 
and his set when I was nineteen; would you, 
Madgie? ” 

Mrs. Harrison said, “ I wouldn’t look at them 
now. 3 ’ 

For this burst of indiscretion she immediately 
blushed (“Oh, I oughtn’t to have said that! I 

didn’t mean that ”), but it caused instantly to 

light up the two boyish faces representing the 
Generation Deserted. 

Archie Laverock laughed aloud. 

The Snotty chuckled. “Splendid, Auntie! And 
what a judge! Here’s to OURSELVES, Lave- 
rock ! ” He pushed a brimming, sparkling glass 
towards the Rover. “ Wilt imbibe? ” 


CHAPTER THREE 


CLASH 

“ The fruitful feud of Her and His ” 

— Swinburne. 

W HEN Archie Laverock drank that toast, 
blithely tossed off, “ To OURSELVES ! ” 
did he know what it would come to mean? 
Was it already the challenge of one generation 
unto another? 

Probably not yet. . . . 

For the next two days the young man’s life was 
full indeed of other things ; the comparative merits 
of the little Standard and the Singer cars between 
which those clients in Surrey were hesitating — 
a committee to which he was summoned by the 
Governor at his headquarters — a particularly tire- 
some complication with a new firm over a matter 
of repairs. Further, on the Saturday afternoon 
young Laverock was constrained to skate over to 
some God-forsaken spot outside Nottingham to 
interview a new client who had written. . . . 
These preoccupations are but lightly touched upon 
in this story, but they kept the Rover heavily busy. 
Definitely removed, too, from any feminine 
element, even in his thoughts. 

On Sunday (that day of rest) his thoughts 
wandered back again to the subject of the family 
at the Blue Bungalow^, Archie discovered that, 
subconsciously, his mind had made itself up that 
43 


44 : THE ARRANT ROVER 

he would be seeing them all again, shortly. How 
this would come to pass he didn’t yet know. Only, 
somehow, Mrs. Joy had his address taken “ in 
ease ” she ever had thoughts of setting up a little 
ear for themselves (not that it seemed likely, when 
a dozen car-owners were always too keen on the 
chance of driving Lucy). They knew where to 
find him, any time . . . even if it were not for 
another week hence. . . . 

So he mused, taking his grassc matinee luxuri- 
ously in his camp-bed that Sunday morning, pipe 
between his lips, Sunday papers and cup of tea to 
hand, and a fresh spring breeze blowing in upon 
him through the open tent-flap that show T ed a sky 
of riotous blue-and-white, a stretch of green cricket- 
pitch, the black ribbon of a cinder track, and some 
long wooden buildings. 

For that year young Laverock and two friends 
of his had gone into summer-camp composed of 
three old army tents set up in the field that adjoined 
a sports-ground and pavilion belonging to some 
London firm. This ground was not far from the 
railway that took them up to town in twenty-five 
minutes, and the groundsman (Late Army Service 
Corps) cooked their breakfasts and did odd jobs 
for them. Of the other two demobilized warriors, 
Archie’s friends (hard-up, cheerful, athletic young 
Britons of bed-rock type, whose names, if they 
kept out of casualty lists, would never be seen in 
any of the papers), one had a job on the railways, 
and the other had returned to the city. The camp 
was at present augmented by the brother of this 
second young man; a captain in Indian army kit 
who had turned up one night unannounced in 


CLASH 


45 


search of his relative, only to find that he'd gone 
off on a walking tour for his fortnight's leave. 

“ But there's his bed here, if that’s any good to 
you," young Laverock had told the stranger. Who 
had replied, “ Oh thanks very much ; I'll have it for 
to-night, if you don't really mind. Very hard to find 
anywhere to put up at, at home these days . . .” 
and who had there remained for the last 
ten days — attaching himself to Archie after 
the fashion of a lost dog taken into a pleasant 
family, sharing the evening life of the camp,, 
strumming on an odd banjo found in the pavilion, 
helping Parkin, the groundsman, to roll the pitch 
during the day, and finding this Eve-less Eden good 
enough. Indeed it remains a moot point whether 
Love itself does much to modify the basic fact that 
the sexes are happier — but for love — when living 
apart. 

This morning it was the young I. A. Captain 
who had brewed early tea for the others, had 
fetched The Referee and The Observer y and who 
had now for the third time invaded Archie's lair, 
demanding, “How much longer are you going to 
lie hogging there, Laverock, you lazy old devil 
you — D'you know it’s about twenty-five to ten? 
Those others have been on the River an hour. 
Get up! . . . Tumble up; I've got your shower 
ready for you " 

Archie flung a pillow at his head, followed a 
dog-fight ; laughing yells of “ Shurrup ! " and 
“ Chuck it, you silly ass " — more* scuffling, Mr. 
Laverock holed from his couch, and, trailing blue- 
and-searlet blankets, dragged struggling out of the 
tent and towards the open hut, where they kept 


46 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


the roller and the hose. Here Captain Smith, still 
bully ragging, wrestled the other young man out 
of his pyjamas and flung them far; next turning 
the hose full on to him as he stood. 

Inevitable, here, to avoid mentioning yet once 
again a people who went down leaving in stone 
their monument to Bodily Beauty. Beauty not 
yet surpassed, but often yet attained, as may be 
seen in swimming-baths, on football ground or 
games-pavilion to-day. Those Ancient Greeks 
(quoted to the ultimate cliche, but still the stand- 
ard!) would have found little fault with the 
shape of one young ex-soldier of a later Empire; 
for each of Archie's lines as he leapt, crouched, 
braced himself against the jet of icy Wight water, 
was borrowed centuries ago to express some Quoit- 
thrower, some Gladiator, some God. The marble 
cherishes these in every museum in Europe, but 
does not give us the colouring that Archie Laverock 
must have shared with those Grecian lads. For 
(before the splashing wet made of him a statue of 
glass, a-gleam, reflecting from a hundred planes 
the blue-and-white morning) he showed a glowing 
tan that ceased, abrupt as a garment, at coliar-bone 
and fore-arm ; showing for the rest of the flesh the 
even cream, touched with sepia-pink of a tea-rose. 

Lost upon Archie or his companions would have 
been any such simile; they had no painter, sculptor, 
or any of a self-conscious breed among them. It 
was just two average wholesome young men in the 
full enjoyment of life to whom Parkin, appearing 
round the corner of the shed from the dressing 
rooms, near which he had his quarters, called out— 


CLASH 47 

(( Beg your pardon, gentlemen ; Mr. Laverock, 
Sir, you’re wanted on the telephone.” 

“ Bight oh,” called Archie. “ Chuck over that 
towel, Smith.” 

He wound it for a loin-cloth about his waist, 
and dashed to the telephone in the little office at 
the side of the dressing-room. 

“ Hullo? ” 

“ Hullo; is that you, Laverock?” called back a 
blithe, half-settled baritone. “ This is Midshipman 
J oy speaking ! ” 

“ Ah — Good-morning, Frankie.” 

“ Good-morning. I say, old thing, are you up 
and dressed? ” 

“ Rather,” retorted young Laverock, twisting his 
towel. “ Aren’t you?” 

“ Well, more or less. ... I say, I’ve a message 
for you. From my Mater. She says are you by 
chance free for lunch?” 

“ To-day? ” 

u Yes ; aujourd'hui” 

“ Er — I think so,” called back the Rover with 
a hasty mental readjustment of his Day of Rest. 
There was to have been tennis with some friends 
of Captain Smith near Harrow . . . but, after 
all, he had “ left it open.” Good thing. “ Yes, I am 
free. You coming over to look us up in our lair 
as you promised you would some day ? ” 

“ No; wilt join us in our sylvan retreat instead? 
My Mater hoped you would. Picnic in the pine- 
woods just beyond our bungalow. We’ve asked the 
Admiral; but Mummie and Auntie and I thought 
we’d like somebody of our own — ahem — mental 


4S THE ARRANT ROVER 

calibre and outlook on life, don't you know, for us 
to talk to. Could you stick it? ” 

“Oh! Rather. How very kind of your ” 

« Good. You’ll come. We’ll expect you a little 
before one then, so that you can lend a hand with 
carting the viands,” called back the Snotty, adding, 
as an afterthought, “ I say, Laverock, shall you 
be able to get over? Trains perfectly hopeless, of 
course. Have you got a motor-bike or anything? ” 
“ Somebody has,” the Rover reassured him. 
(For “Somebody” read “Smith.”) “Will you 
thank Mrs. Joy most awfully from me, and say I 
shall love to come? ... So long! ” 

Two hours later found him at the picnic. 
Picnics, as every hostess knows, may be divided 
into “ Rags ” and “ Frosts.” This of Mrs. Joy's 
was unmistakably a Frost. Owing, one fancies, 
to the guest-of-honour, and to the manner in which 
he spread, fog-like, an atmosphere of Not-En joying. 

For at a feast in the woods the Admiral was em- 
phatically not his jovial, breezy, still-young self. He 
loathed, for one thing, sitting down on the ground, 
knowing how difficult it would be to get up again 
from that slippery-smooth terra-cotta-coloured 
carpet of pine-needles. He could not find a com- 
fortable enough trunk against which to lean ; nor 
where to put his feet. . . . The wind blew out 
match after match, as well as making him feel 
livery. For what I have mentioned as a “fresh 
breeze,” that tossed the ballooning white clouds 
across the blue, that swayed the pine-trees, and 
rippled in the women’s pretty frocks, that was 
summed up as “ this beastly East wind ” by the 


CLASH 


49 


Admiral. Meals out-of-doors, too, lie loathed. 
Insensate mania women seemed to have for feeding- 
in the open ! To the Admiral, there was something 
positively indecent about it — 

All this, you realize, was what he was thinking; 
I will put this picnic only in the terms of the 
mental asides of the guests star-scattered on the 
pine-needles. For you will not need to be reminded 
of what they ate and drank nor of the cardboard 
plates ; and the accompanying talk went on as usual 
about the chances for the Derby, and are you going 
to Henley this year and Pavlova! Oh, isn’t she 
too wonderful, and no we haven’t been able to get 
seats for it yet, and some people who’ve been, 
say the acting is too marvellous and other people 
say it’s rotten. . . . 

None of this was lacking while the Admiral 
continued to tell himself how much better it w^ould 
have been if the little girl had let him take her off 
to lunch in comfort at the Riviera, somewhere 
gay, have a look at Delysia & Co., and then drive 
her on to bask in the wall-garden at his sister’s. 
Just herself and himself. The girl was charming, 
of course, perfectly charming. The prettiest little 
lady he’d met for years; sweet little thing. Rut 

her people No. The Admiral couldn’t say 

he cared much about her people, really. Oh, they 
were all right, of course. The boy, quite nice, knew 
how to behave. Silly little woman, the mother 
though. Very silly. Didn’t seem to mind letting 
the girl go about anywhere; having all sorts of 
people to the house. . . . Who the dooce was this 
young Cycle-agent, or whatever it was, this young 
Laverock, who was here again? He was all very 


50 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


well, but was he an old friend or what? Talking to 
the Aunt. . . . The Aunt, too ; mutton dressed as 
lamb ; a thing the Admiral had no dam’ use for. ... 

Meanwhile the Aunt’s thoughts : “ The Ad- 

miral’s looking at least a hundred to-day; is it 
because of this attractive lad? . . . People say, 
6 How horrible! ’ if a woman of fifty who’s kept her 
figure and her skin lets a young man make love 
to her. They never turn a hair when a man, all 
bulgy and bald and short-winded and not nice to 
smell, tries to marry girls thirty-five of forty years 
younger than he is! Why? Aren’t people funny! 

. . . What a pity Lucy had to ask him ; it would 
have been so jolly with just that delightful Lave- 
rock boy. Lucy never sees a real young man except 
Frankie . . . what a waste ! . . . Ah, if I were in 
her shoes, what a glorious time I’d ” 

Lucy was thinking : “ Why is this being such a 
beastly party? Why doesn’t somebody be amusing? 
Why is the Admiral so fearfully cross? ., . . 
Does he mind this new boy? Silly! As if there 
were anything to mind. As if I should waste a 
thought on this Laverock young man. . . . Why 
isn’t the young man as nice as he seemed the first 
afternoon? He’s hardly talked to me since we 
came out. He doesn’t seem to look at me at all. 
Doesn’t he — doesn’t he think I’m pretty , then? 
. . . Frankie said he sounded so keen to come 
this morning on the telephone. . . . Has he only 
come to talk to Auntie? Some quite young men 
seem to like women who might be their mothers! 
Isn’t he rather dull? Or is he conceited? I wonder 
if he’s engaged , even ? ” 


CLASH 


51 


Archie Laverock’s thoughts were: “Well, dash 
it all, why should these elderly Romeos with money 
have everything else as well? Smith knows people 
who know him in Devonshire. Says he’s got that 
topping place Treillage Court. Fishing and a 
moor and things. Well? . . . Friends with every- 
body who counts. . . . Well, what about it? A 
widower with grown-up daughters! Wouldn’t a 
girl hate it, or would the other make up? 
Repulsive ! . . . Right. Have a shot at it. Have 
just a shot at cutting him out here. . . . What 
neck, to think of it! No chance, probably, 
but . . . She’s lovely. The little girl’s wonderful. 
Look at her, exactly like a picture in that big hat 
with the blue cherries; much prettier without the 
paint, mouth like a petal where it’s curved in and 
out. I don’t wonder at all the fuss that’s been 
made. That’s the kind of girl who has men blowing 
their brains out in her dressing-room because she’s 

turned them down. * Kind of girl ’ ? Nobody 

like her. She’s so different from anybody I’ve ever 
struck. Why, she could have anybody she fancied. 
Marry a Duke, that sort of thing. Spoilt, of course. 
So used to seeing everybody go down at her little 
feet, in one . . . Well? Supposing Somebody 
didn’t f Just for a change? See what that 
does ” 

The thoughts of Mummie : “ This charming new 
boy seems so shy with Lucy, he’s scarcely ven- 
tured a word to the darling yet. Yet he was so 
at home with us on Thursday night. I wonder 
when the Admiral will go. . . . Fancy, my poor 
Tom would be his age now if he’d lived. I can’t 


52 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


imagine him. . . . Wasn’t the chicken salad nice f 
And why wouldn't he have any more of this cup? I 
wonder when the Admiral will go? ” 

Finally, these were the thoughts of Mr. Frankie 
Joy : “ Always a ghostly wash-out, mixing up 

Friends-at-Court with your friends! The old boy’s 
fed to the teeth. I expect he feels it chilly or 
something in this darned wood. I think I’d better 
suggest our adjourning now. . . . Mummie!” 

The adjournment to the blue bungalow garden 
in its sunny hollow well out of the wind was 
certainly a success as far as the Admiral’s comfort 
was concerned. Here he had a comfortable seat; 
warming as the sunshine, too, was a distinctly addi- 
tional sweetness towards him in the manner of 
Lucy Joy. 

“ Mummie ! The Admiral hasn’t seen the new 
Arbuthnot photographs of me that came yester- 
day ! . . . Oh, yes ; they’re rather good, we think. 
Frankie No! I'll fetch them.” 

She stepped across her dogs, and skipped up 
the shallow brick steps between the mauve-and- 
white cushions of rock-plants; presently returning 
with hands and arms full, not only of the huge 
brown cardboard envelopes, but of various framed 
photographs as well. 

“ Here they are! . . . And I’ve brought the 
Bassano ones that Mummie likes better so that 
you can compare them; and here’s the Keturah 
Collins for you to see how it looks in the lovely 
silver frame you sent ” 

Her talk was now all for the Admiral. She 
knelt in little-girl fashion on the grass at his spats, 


CLASH 


53 


holding out for his inspection, one by one, the 
portraits. . . . All had appeared or would appear 
in the weekly papers; elaborately finished, posed, 
retouched out of all spontaneity — but still her. 

“Miss Lucy Joy, England's loveliest cinema 
star, in her charming Surrey home , A thing of 

beauty and ‘ a Joy’ ” 

“‘We only count the sunny hours’; Miss Lucy 
J oy at the Sundial ”• — graceful even in odiously 
pseudo-Greek draperies and tango-shoes from 
Kaynes. . . . 

“ Ah ! Very pretty. . . . Very pretty! Charming. 
Delightful expression . . .” or “ This is just you, 
Miss Lucy,” her middle-aged admirer approved 
each in turn. “ And which am I to be allowed to 
carry away? ” 

“ Choose,” cooed the girl. 

He chose (“Yet ah! that Spring should vanish 
with the Rose ”■ — a study of Miss Joy musing 
among the narcissus, at Kew) and lent his 
fountain-pen for her to autograph it in immense 
curly writing. (“ Yours very sincerely, LUCY 
JOY, otherwise 4 Little One! ’ ”) 

After which, from the AdmiraPs hands, the por- 
traits were passed to the younger man. Archie 
Laverock permitted himself a polite, “ Ah, that’s 
very good ” and “ I think that is the best, myself ; 
the one you chose, Sir.” 

The peculiar gift already remarked upon, of 
guessing what the woman in question would like 
him to do next, this gift took the form of a whisper 
to him that what the girl expected was for him, 
Archie Laverock, to beg for an autographed photo- 
graph for himself. It would have been only the nat- 


54 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


ural thing to do. She was the-most-photograplied- 
girl in the country at that moment. Her post-bag 
bulged daily with letters from the public begging 
for a photograph, or for her to sign the picture 
postcard portrait sent therewith; everybody knew 
that. Yes; it would have been natural enough 
for Archie to make the request. . . . 

He did not make it. 

Instead, he collected the sheaf, and said to the 
girl, “ Let me take these back into the house for 
you.” 

“Oh, you don’t know where they go, Mr. Lave- 
rock. I took some of them off the drawing-room 
mantelpiece. I hate having things put back in 
odd places,” she twittered importantly, and she 
skipped after him, all the blue cherries a-bob on 
the brim of her big garden-hat. 

“What a world !” croaked the forgotten parrot on 
his cage. 

In the pretty drawing-room, all chintz and lustre 
and fashion-papers, the lattice-windows were so 
long and flung so wide open that the room was as 
full of fresh air and flower-scent as was the garden 
outside. Rut in that room, there stirred suddenly 
another atmosphere. The clash of personality 
against personality, the intangible “ on guard ” of 
the duel between Man and Maid, the unspoken, 
“Now! You’d have it all your own way , would 
you? Would you? Would you?” 

Archie Laverock suddenly remembered a woman 
at a dance — oh, right back in ’sixteen that must 
have been — who had spoken of a curious phase 
through which some friendships pass; a time when 
it’s too soon for personalities, too late for weather- 


CLASH 


'55 


and-iheatre talk. At that intermediate stage the 
people sometimes become senselessly, outrageously 
rude to one another. 

And at this moment the young man realized that 
he longed to give tongue in some wounding 
brusquerie. He was almost, yes, certain, that he 
surprised that same wish in the eyes of the girl. 

But she only said, “ Oh, put that oval frame on 
the silver-table here; that’s where it lives,” in the 
tone of a, profiteer’s wife directing the new parlour 
maid. Curt tone, un-pretty manner, they did not 
become the Beauty-Girl. She did not know it, but 
at that moment her whole tiny person seemed to 
cry aloud that she was meant for gracious flower- 
like ways, for caresses ; that she ought at this very 
instant to be saying and hearing quite other things. 
Angry — let the young man be angry, but only for 
the space of a lovers’ tiff. . . . Then the making-up 
4< that all the more endears ”... quickly, quickly^ 
why all this waste of time? . . . But that of course 
was only the hasty whisper of Nature the old 
Nurse, and if we invariably listened to Her our 
world would indeed crumble about us. 

So the young man, stung, not by her, but sub- 
consciously by the senseless waste of good things 
in general, looked down very coldly upon the young 
woman; with outward meekness he set down the 
frame. Then, suddenly, quite spontaneously and in 
a tone of real interest, he gave a “ Hullo ! ” that 
made her turn quickly round. 

u What are you looking at, Mr. Laverock? ” 

“ This.” The Rover held out a photograph in a 
smaller frame. 

u I know this girl,” said he, his eyes on the image 


5G 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


of a pretty face with a Red Cross band above 
serenely laughing eyes. “Wasn’t she working at 
Lady Richbourne’s Hospital for Officers, in 
Town?” . . . 

“ Yes,” returned Lucy Joy, taken aback. “ She’s 
Ethel Johnstone — she was at school; one of the big 
girls when I went. You know the mad infatuation 
one gets, as a child. ... I thought she was the 
most wonderful creature who’d ever lived.” 

“ She was a topping girl,” pronounced the Rover, 
in tones of unstinted and real admiration. “ She's 
prettier than this,” he added, putting down the 
photograph. “ Much prettier.” 

“Do you think so?” said the Beauty-Girl, 
amusingly disconcerted. Not a common experience 
to her, to hear, in her presence, another girl so 
praised. “ D’you like red hair?” 

“ When it’s the sort of red hers was,” answered 
this young man, obviously caught back for the 
moment to memories. “ It seemed to light up the 
ward like a posy of marigolds or something; 
awfully cheering to look at when you were laid on 
your, back and getting fed up with day after day 
in Hospital. She was so bright and jolly, too. 
Everybody liked her. Everybody in the ward used 
to call her < Our Ginger ’ ” 

“Oh, yes, they would,” said Lucy Joy, lightly, 
absently. She added — on a sudden, unexpected 
impulse — an unexpected question. 

“ Mr. Laverock ! Was it you ” she asked quickly, 
“who gave Ethel that great big bottle of Mys - 
terieuse for a present when you left the Hospital? ” 

The young man looked at her in swift surprise; 
looked at her with those Rover’s eyes of his, deep- 


CLASH 


57 


set, wide-apart, sweetly-shaped, of a colour that 
seems sometimes clear-brown of a trout-pool, some- 
times grey as rain on rocks, sometimes green as a 
quick-sliding stream under willows, sometimes a 
bright and melting mixture of all these colours. 
Unstable as water, they do still (in their fashion) 
excel ! 

Lucy thought impatiently, “ What colour are 
the creature’s eyes? ” even while she waited for 
him to answer her question about the Mysterieuse . 

A second's delay only; he caught himself up 
from replying what was on the tip of his tongue — 
“ How did you know anything about it? ” — and 
said gently as if puzzled, “ I don’t think so? ” 

“ Oh, I expect I'm mixing you up with somebody 
else,” the girl replied airily. “ There were so many 
of you, weren’t there? I don’t suppose Ethel knew 
one from another herself ” 

And she turned towards the garden, no doubt 
feeling that she had the last word. 

The Hover, suddenly cheered, restored to the 
unreasoning, unreasonable gaiety of his age, fol- 
lowed her out. Never, he thought, had he felt more 
completely “ at the heels ” of any girl. He’d get 
her, too, he vowed, lifting his shining head in 
the sun; he'd have a dashed good shot at getting 
her, by Gad. . . . Hadn’t he just hit on; the way 
to begin to handle her Ladyship? Cross as two 
sticks because one seemed quite as interested, or 
more, in other girls; piqued if one didn’t seem to 
be admiring her the whole time. . . . All difficult 
and englamoured as she was by her success, with 
half the men in London keen to know her, he’d 
get her to look at him yet. ... . . * A 


CHAPTER FOUR 


A RACE 

“ Youth will be served ! ” 

— Saying. 

N EXT, came that affair of the break-down. 

Oh, not to Archie! So far it had been his 
luck not to have had one in all his dealings 
with cars and their little ways that kept him so 
busy. . . . This story, which does not concern 
itself with that side of the Rover’s life, takes him 
up again a week from the picnic in the pine-woods, 
on an early afternoon that found him again in 
Surrey, again, incidentally, driving a two-seater. 

This he was taking back to town for some minor 
alterations to be made in the body according to 
the wishes of a client who had been “ put on to ” 
Laverock’s firm by the people w T ith whom he’d 
completed the deal with the little Standard. 

A couple of miles away from their house and 
on a turning to the Portsmouth road the young 
man came upon a larger car, beached, beside a 
village green with ponds, geese, chorus of open- 
mouthed school-children complete; these last all 
gaping, from a safe distance, at the owner of the 
car. He was a stout and four-square gentleman 
in a light Holland driving coat that flapped about 
him as he pitted his strength manfully enough 
against every known law of motor-machinery. . . . 


A EACE 


59 

“Somebody in trouble again,” thought Archie 
as he drove up. 

The man by the wayside turned, cap pushed up 
from his brow, face a study in angry purples. 

“ Good Lord, it's the Admiral,” Archie realized. 
“Er — can I be of any use, Sir?” he added an 
instant later. 

The Admiral’s heated countenance relaxed. 
“ Ha,” he grunted in recognition and relief. 
“ Good-afternoon. How do you do? Thanks very 
much ; if you would have a look ” 

(Archie was already having the look.) 

“ at this blasted thing. She suddenly 

refused to go another step, and 1’vq been anchored 
here for a quarter of an hour. The first time I’ve 
been out on the road with her alone. I’m blessed 
if I Can you see what’s wrong? ” 

“ I think so,” said Archie serenely, long brown 
fingers at work. i6 It’s nothing much, Sir. . . . 
A loose connection on the magneto. . . . There! 
... I don’t think you’ll have any further trouble 
wdth that.” He straightened himself. 

“ Thank you very much, my boy. Much obliged 
to you,” returned the Admiral, more cordially than 
he had yet addresed this young man, already seen 
on two occasions at the blue bungalow. “ I was 
fortunate to meet you ; very fortunate. And where 
are you off to?” 

Archie explained. 

“ Ah,” took up the Admiral in added good 
temper. He was a quite good-tempered senior 
officer when things were going reasonably smoothly, 
with many more good qualities than Mrs. Harrison, 
for instance, would have credited him with. The 


60 


THE ARRANT ROVER 

head grows grey, in most of us, so much sooner 
than the heart ! The Admiral, for all his natural 
— well envy, of those whose heads still match the 
golden youth within— was fair enough to this 
young man who had helped him. Not a bad boy 
at all, he thought. Gentlemanly boy enough. 
Very hard lines on these young fellows (the 
Admiral realized) who have to make up five years 
lee-way in these present conditions. What chance, 
now, had a boy like this? Evidently no money. 
No people. No possibility of getting married, for 
instance, for donkey’s years. . . . 

The Admiral’s thoughts rather ran on marriage 
this spring. His own, he considered, had been a 
particularly happy marriage — 

( Most sailors’ marriages are, for obvious reasons 
which they overlook.) 

— and it was not impossible — not at all impos- 
sible that he might even consider a second venture 
one of these days. The girls w T ere off his hands 
now. . . . There was life in the old dog yet. ., . . 
He wasn’t so old, damme! . . . 

He offered young Laverock a cigar. Then volun- 
teered, “ I met you just in time. As a matter of 
fact I’m just on my way to call in on our mutual 
friends at the bungalow over there.” 

“ Oh, are you, Sir? ” said Archie pleasantly. 

“ Yes, the fact is it happens to be my birthday, 
and I thought I might manage to persuade the 
ladies to help me out with a little celebration 
at the Berkeley.” 

“ To-night, Sir? ” said Archie Laverock. Adding 
these (to him) surprising words, “I’m afraid — I 
fancy you may find they’re engaged.” 


A RACE 


61 


The words came from his lips as if uttered by 
another. Why should he have said them? He 
had no idea what engagement those people might 
have for to-night. They might be free, or away. He 
hadn’t heard. He had made no plan. 

That plan, however, formed itself lightning- 
swift in young Laverock’s mind even as the elder 
man with a tolerant smile, a twinkle in that mid- 
shipman’s eye of his, returned — 

“ Ha, yes, yes; a most sought-after little lady 
our friend, I know. Still! . . . One may be able 
to induce them. ... I can only try my luck. . . . 
Well! I’ll push off. Good-day to you, Mr. Lave- 
rock. Oh, are you starting the car for me? Much 
obliged to you, I’m sure.” 

“ Not at all, Sir; so glad I happened to be there,” 
from Archie, promptly. Respectfully lifting his 
cap, he went on his way. 

But not along the high road to London. No! 
He had that plan to follow, given a chance. . . . 
He turned off, sharply, to the right. This was 
one of these short cuts of Surrey lane which the 
Rover knew as well as he knew the path to his 
own tent, seeing that all the home counties were 
beginning to be as an open map to him now. And 
he knew where he might dare to cram on 
speed. . . . 

There was just a chance, the young man at the 
wheel was thinking rapidly but composedly, after 
the campaigner’s manner. Just a chance. This 
cut across country was a couple of miles longer 
than going back by the main road to the turning 
beside the pine-woods. But, dash it, he couldn’t 
race the old boy along the open road. The Admiral 


62 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


had the start all right; a good start, a start in 
every way. . . . 

Archie would do what he could, though. . . . 
Up, down, to the right, here. This lane was bad; 
windings, doublings. . . . But this little Singer was 
light. The Admiral’s car was a bigger affair ; more 
cumbersome. Besides! If this were the old boy’s 
first day on the road alone he wouldn’t manage 
her as Archie — driving all day long, all these 
months — could manage this. . . . He wouldn’t 
make the pace that Archie could make, was making 
even now. . . . 

On, on, to the right again . . . the village, the 
post-office, and, at last! the turning to the lane 
by the pine-woods, streaming those dark -green and 
brown scarves on either hand as Archie dashed 
past. He had reckoned on coming out at the top 
of the hill, the back of the house. Here he alighted ; 
without stopping the car he dashed down the side- 
path into the little garden. 

At the gate in the palings a car — no ! a taxi-cab 
was drawn up on the turfy track. A taxi; and upon 
it were piled a large dress-basket and several of 
the gay-striped hat-boxes, splashed across with the 
name of a French milliner in letters not so much 
larger than the autograph of Lucy Joy. 

Good Lord. . . . She was going away, then? 
Neither of them would be able to engage her for 
this evening? The race had been in vain? 

Even as Archie’s face fell he was assailed by a 
gay storm of welcome from the lawn. . . . Not 
her voice. . . . Not Lucy’s voice. . . . No, she 
wasn’t there. 

Only Mrs. Joy sprang up from where she was 


A RACE 


63 

sitting, winding petunia-coloured silk for that 
jumper of hers off the hands of her sister. 

“Oh, Madgie! Look! It’s Mr. Laverock ” 

“ Hullo ! How d’you do ” 

“ How nice of you to come again so soon ! Oh 
no! I oughtn’t to have said 'so soon,’ ought I! 
We ought to have thought it was countless aeons — 
be quiet , dogs ! — since we saw you ! ” 

“ But we are glad to see you ! We ” 

“Pet! My pet, aren’t you nearly ready to 
start?” broke in Mrs. Joy in a sort of scream- 
aside to the house. “ Your taxi’s been waiting 

years! and here's Mr. Have you had lunch? ” 

to the young man. “ You haven’t, of course. They 
never have. Come in at once and eat what’s left 
of the ” 

“ I can’t, thank you most awfully much,” Archie 
succeeded in putting in firmly. “ I can only stop 
one second; the cars up there, and I’ve got to 
fly ” (presto). “ I came to ask you and Mrs. Har- 
rison — and Frankie if he’s still with you?” 

“ Oh, yes ! His leave isn’t up until to-morrow. 
He’s only in his room dressing or shaving or 
something. When the Vicar calls he’s always 
shaving ; such an alibi ! The whole house is 
simply one mass of soap-suds and Blanco and 
tobacco-ash while he’s — Frankie! ” 

“ Good,” said Archie heartily — but thinking 
that every second brought the Admiral’s car nearer. 
“ Then will you, Mrs. Joy, and your sister and 

Frankie come out to supper to-night ” 

“Oh! Yes! How lovely! We’ll love to. 
Where? ” 

Small rueful laugh from Laverock. “Only at 


64 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


one priceless little dug-out. Frankie knows about 

finding it and all that ” 

(“Hul — lo! ” as Frankie lounged into sight 

waving a pipe. ) 

“ he'll tell you. You all three, then, will 

come? That’s awfully nice. I ” His quick 

Rover's glance had caught a blue flutter inside 
the hall. “ I know it’s no use. ... I don’t ask 
Miss Lucy.” 

A pretty petulant treble demanded from the 
house, “ Why don’t you ask Miss Lucy? ” 

She stood, framed in the garlanded door-way, 
beyond her young brother's big flannel-clad shoul- 
der. A picture, a picture that crowds paid to 
see on the screen, that men raced about the roads 
to have one word with in the flesh; the Beauty- 
Girl, the season's rage and vogue and pet. . . . 

Archie looked up at her with such composure 
that none would have guessed at the disturbance 
which that sweet glimpse roused within him. 
Purpose dominated emotion. He smiled serenely 
as he greeted her — the girl who had filled any 
waking-dream for which a hard-worked young 
motor-expert had had time since he saw her last. 

“ Oh ! I don’t invite you ’’ he told her with a care- 
less glance towards the cab and the luggage, 
“ partly because I thought you were going away? ” 
“ Only to rehearsal. They're doing ‘ The High- 
way-man’s Sweetheart’ on Gibbet Hill, and I’m 
supposed to be there at three, but what is the use 
of turning up punctually,” twittered the star, 
“ when it means waiting for the whole of the Hippo- 
drome chorus to finish eloping from the girls' 
school in the neighbourhood? We finish by six, I 


A RACE 


65 


trust. And what’s the other * partly ’ why you 
leave me out of an ivitation that includes the whole 
of the rest of my tribe? May I ask if you’re taking 
the Parrot ? Or will it be enough with Mummie 
and Auntie and Frankie, Mr. Laverock?” 

Archie Laverock smiled up at her as easily as if 
he had the whole afternoon with her before him, 
instead of wondering how far off the Admiral was 
now? live minutes? four? Or had Providence 
arranged another break-down? Or — Lord! Was 
that his horn on the road now? 

“ I shouldn't dare to ask you,” he told Miss 
Joy in a “ light-ragging ” note. “You don’t know 
the kind of thing at all ; pot-luck and garbage. Just 
an old sergeant to do for us. Drink out of 
enamelled cups . . . wouldn’t amuse you at all. 
. . . Only, as it’s my birthday. . . .” (This last, 
quite on the spur of the moment, and due to 
frenzied consciousness of the Admiral’s nearing, 
nearing. ) . . . “ My birthday and so on . . . and 
we’ve a man there who plays the banjo rather 
decently, and your Aunt told me she used to have 
a banjo, so I thought . . . But . . . I’ve nothing 
to hold out as an inducement to you he added, 
while his voice changed suddenly from the casual 
to the wistful. 

That tone supplied all that he left unsaid about 
“ I’m afraid it doesn’t run to the sort of thing Miss 
Lucy Joy is accustomed to; never will; so why 
say any more about it? Good-bye ; I hope you’ve 
a good time at the Berkeley ” 

That tone caused those sentimental Edwardians, 
Mummie and Auntie, to exchange glances very 
emus. Therefore, they missed something; the look 


06 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


of their darling at that moment as she stood upon 
the steps. An odd look; something that meant 
more than any expression that had yet crossed the 
innch-advertised and perfect little face of Lucy Joy. 

It was the look of a very young child first con- 
fronted with something quite new but beautiful 
in its sight; a little child seeing for the first time 
a rainbow, or a lighted Christmas-tree has shown 
that tremulous breaking-up, that hint of shy ra- 
diance. . . . 

Mostly, the successfully modern girl begins like 
every other young girl, with dreams of Prince 
Charming. These she outgrows (that is, if she 
means to be a real success) at about sixteen. After 
this her dreams of delight take the form of things 
more tangible; a screen or stage career is often 
among them, for that leads to everything else. In 
the case of Miss Lucy Joy, the “ everything else,” 
the career, the success, the frocks, the advertise- 
ment and the popularity had all come first. At 
nineteen she had them all. Now, for the first 
time she had a glimpse of the other. 

A young lover, good to look upon. . . . 

She looked, for that second. Then, petulant and 
gay again, she cried out — 

“ I’m coming. Of course I’m coming . . . 

Mummie, he thinks I’m too spoilt to enjoy anything 
that isn’t ” 

“ Oh, Mr. Laverock ! She isn’t a bit spoilt ! Of 
course she shall come too if she wants to, shan’t 
she?” Mummie rushed to her child’s defence. 
“ She’d enjoy it! wouldn’t you, my pet? Now 
fly, darling, fly! or you’ll never get back in time 
from those awful people ■” 


A RACE 


67 


Lucy, with a wake of blue tulle and parfum Mys- 
terieuse , flew. The taxi with her large dress-basket 
and her small self had disappeared round the 
corner of the road just as the Admiral’s car came 
into view from the other direction. Young Lave- 
rock had at that moment taken the path back to 
where his two-seater waited, snorting to the pine- 
trees’ whispered “ Hush . . 1 hush ...” 

So it w T as that the Admiral, arriving, found only 
the two elder ladies in the garden ( Frankie having 
precipitately fled indoors, and covered his pink face 
with unnecessary shaving-soap ) , found, too, that the 
prophecy of that young motor-man was fulfilled. 

They would have loved to come to the Admiral’s 
birthday-dinner, Mrs. Joy affused, but most unfor- 
tunately they — 

( “ What a life ! ” screamed the parrot. ) 

“ they w T ere engaged. Lucy, too.” 

u Ah, well ! another time,” said the Admiral 
breezily; turning back towards the waiting-car. 
“ I hardly hoped to find you free. I know the 
Little One is always booked far ahead.” 

“ But we’d only five mintnes ago made this en- 
gagement!” babbled that creature of impulse, 
Mummie, then stopped. 

Mrs. Harrison, however, felt that she might now 
complete the tale. “We promised that nice boy, 
Mr. Laverock (whom you met on Sunday), to go 
over by train and have a sort of picnic meal at 
his camp ! ” 

“Ah, really.” The Admiral turned. “Ah, yes. 
I think I met the young man just now on the road. 
He’s just been here, has he? Indeed.” 

Choler lit up that blue eye over which the cap 


68 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


was cocked just a thought askew. The young beg- 
gar ! thought the Admiral. He had, had he? Stolen 
a march. Raced him. Well . . . The race isn’t 
always to the swift. Perhaps he — that youngster, 
wasn’t going to have the last word after all. . . . 

The Admiral took two strides back from the gate.. 
His jaw was set, but his tone was airy enough as 
he made his next move. 

“ Mrs. Joy, I wonder if you’d mind my asking 
to go into the house and write a note to Miss Lucy? 
I’ve just remembered there was something I rather 
wanted to say to her. If I might beg for a bit of 
paper Ah, thanks ” 

He sat down at the bureau in the chintzy draw- 
ing-room so full of flower-scent and fresh air, where 
Lucy and the Rover had crossed invisible swords 
that Sunday afternoon. A dozen highly-finished 
portraits of Miss Lucy Joy (and one of a girl in a 
Red Cross cap) smiled upon the four-square man 
who took out his pen with such a look of purpose 
and wrote upon the note-paper provided ; thick and 
rough-edged and feminine. 

He wrote quickly ; just two sides of a sheet. He 
fastened it up, then took it out on to the sunny 
lawn. 

“ Thanks so much, Mrs. Joy,” he said briskly. 
“ No, no ; I can’t stay for it, really. Thank you very 
much. I must get on, now. And if you’d be so 
kind as to let Miss Lucy have this directly she 
comes in? Au revoir ! ” 


CHAPTER FIVE 

CLIMAX 


“ Take your pretty partner at the — 

( Take your partner ! ) 

Take your pretty partner at the ball. 

I should like to have the chance 
All my life with you to dance, 

Tor I liked my partner best of all.” 

— Antiquated Song . 

N OT until seven o’clock that evening was 
young Laverock free to begin preparations 
for his party. 

He reached camp to find Captain Smith tying 
a white tie w T ith the aid of the shaving-glass hung 
on the tent-pole. 

“ Here, none of that,” Archie ordered. “ You 
don’t dress, please. Nobody’s going to dress. It’s 
not in the picture; spoil the whole thing.” 

“ But,” the young Indian army man protested, 
“ I’m running up to town by the seven-forty; I 

thought I’d look in on some people at the ” 

“ Impossible, I’m afraid,” said Archie good- 
temperedly. “ You can’t leave this evening, Smith ; 
you’re the orchestra.” 

“ The what? ” 

“ The orchestra, the band, the man that plays 

the banjo for these ladies ” 

“Ladies?” 

“ who are coming to supper here.” 

“ Here? ” 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


70 

\ 

“Yes; don’t go on like the echo at a Lake-side 
resort, and don’t let’s have that old story about 
your being terrified of women. Be a tower of 
strength, and get back out of those glad rags,” 
said Archie — himself simmering with inward trepi- 
dation. Inward, for he used agitation as a sort 
of mental petrol. He’d need all the “ drive ” that 
was in him to carry off this evening as a success. 
She was coming, she was coming, and he wanted 
everything to be “ right ” as possible. That is, as 
“ different ” as possible. He wasn’t going to have 
Smith sitting there looking just like any glossy 
well-to-do young man she’d have seen at her usual 
supper-party. Nothing was to be like that. Every- 
thing was to be in abrupt complete and vivid con- 
trast ; the people, the surroundings, the food. 

“ Dinner for seven to-night, Parkin — no, we are 
eight,” he told the groundsman rapidly. “ You’ve 
got chops, haven’t you? and those tins of Heinz 
beans, and potatoes, and there's plenty of beer. 

. . . Have lemonade and some Emu burgundy for 
the ladies, and you’ll have to manage a sweet 
of some sort, sponge-cake and fruit with custard 
over it or something, and ” 

“ Mr. Laverock, Sir!” broke in Parkin with 
reproach. “ It can't be done. Can’t be done. Not 
the sweets and fruit and cetres. No time to run 
up to town and get them now. And it’s early- 
closing day in this place, which you gentlemen 
are always forgetting. Now, if I’d have known 
this morning that you was expecting company to 
dinner ( and ladies, too ! ) I maybe would have been 
able to manage something, but as it is, why ” 

“ Sergeant,” said ex-Captain Laverock very 


CLIMAX 


71 ' * 

quietly. “ See what you can do, will you? . . . 
I'm sure you’ll knock up something all right!” 
he added with the look and the laugh that had 
caused it to be said of him, in a previous existence, 
that the men would do anything for that youngster. 

“ Dinner at eight — or better say a quarter 
past. . . 

“Very good, Sir,” from Parkin, resigned. 

Five minutes later Archie's other stable-com- 
panions arrived home to find him scouring a 
trestle-table that had been lugged out of the 
pavilion and set on a smooth piece of turf near 
the railings. Captain Smith meanwhile was pre- 
paring the table-decorations by cramming into jam- 
jars bouquets composed of cowslips, blue-bells, 
lilac, pansies and southernwood, all tied up 
together very tightly with string. 

“ Hul — lo! Whose birthday’s this?” demanded 
the young man who worked on the railway. “ Are 
you expecting anybody over to-night, Laverock? 
... By Jove! Three ladies and a man? But 
Lord, the dinner. Who’s going to cook? ” 

“Who generally cooks?” retorted Archie, with- 
out looking up from his scrubbing. “ I told them it 
was pot-luck, and that we’d have to give them 

what we always have ourselves ” 

“ They, little dreaming what MUCK that is,” 
commented the young man who worked in the 
city. “ Who is tiie — er — Principal Lady this time, 
Laverock? I hope she’s accustomed to roughing 
it? Has she lived out in the Colonies or was 
she on farm-work during the war, or something 

of that sort? because if so ” 

“I don’t know what she did during the war,” 


72 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


replied young Laverock lightly* as he dropped the 
scrubbing-brush back into the bucket. “ She’s 
acting for the cinema now.” 

“ Cinema? Is she, by Jove? ” All three young 
men pricked up their ears. “ Where did you meet 
her? Who is she? Anybody one’s ever heard of? ” 
This was Archie’s moment. His face showed 
more of a small school-boy’s exultation than the 
amusement of a. grown-up man (one says this, for- 
getting the fact that there is no such thing as a 
“ grown-up” man) as he replied — 

“ Her name is Miss Lucy Joy.” 

Sensation. Then incredulity (“ You’re rot- 
ting ” ) . Then the buzz of comment. 

“ Lucy Joy? Not The Lucy Joy? ” 
u The Periscope girl? ” 

“ Good Lord, Laverock, you know her? ” 

“ Obviously, or I shouldn’t have invited her over 
with the wliole of her family, should I ? ” retorted 
young Laverock, to whom all this was even as 
honey from the honeycomb. Lucy Joy! The name 
was as well-known that Spring as — say Delysia, or 
the Lenglen. . . . And She was coming here, to this 
crazy rubbish-heap of a camp by the railway-line, 
at the invitation of him, Archie Laverock, who was 
nobody in particular. . . . 

“ Have you known her long, you dark horse? ” 
“ Not very. ...” 

“ Why, there’s something about her in to-day’s 
London Mail! I read it in the train coming 

down ” blurted out the young man from the 

city. “ Look here — oh, no, it was in another paper 
perhaps.” 

But Archie had swiftly caught the magazine from 


CLIMAX 73 

him, and turned to the gossipping column head — 

“ WHAT WE WANT TO KNOW ” 

The very first paragraph ran “What it is that 
takes the Admiral doivn so often to a certain blue 
bungalow in Surrey, and if his daughters may 
shortly expect a bolt from the blue f ” 

Followed by “ Whether Miss Lucy Joy, although 
a thing of beauty , intends to remain a Joy very 
much longer f” 

u Awful rot they put in these rags ! ” grunted 
Laverock (carefully folding the paper to stow it 
out of sight). u What’s that, Parkin? Well, if we 
haven’t another table-cloth, we haven’t, that’s all. 
What’s the matter with clean boards? ” 

His friends gazed upon this youth. The utter 
cheek of him, inviting celebrity to this squalor! 

“ I suppose you’re sure she’s coming? ” suggested 
the young city man. “ One always hears that 
theatricals . . . Well, they vow they’re coming for 
the fun of it, and then fail to materialize ; the most 
unreliable crowd on earth.” 

Archie glared at him over the jam-pots of 
flowers. “ The Joys aren’t exactly ‘ theatricals,’ ” 
he explained stiffly. “ Miss Joy has only been going 
in for this since that competition-affair. Of course 

she is coming ” this with added composure 

because he himself felt far from certain on this 
point. Suppose she didn’t come? Found it too 
late, too much of a drag to get back from her film- 
rehearsal? 

“ May I ask,” inquired the young railway-official, 
“if you’ve invited Princess Mary also?” 

“ Princess Mary would be an easier proposition,” 
murmured the young city man. “ Princesses are 


74 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


used to being led round slums and shown how 
the poor live. But Miss Lucy .Joy! . . . And this 
show of ours . . . Chow, a la Lockhart! . . 

The last word was to Captain Smith. Mildly he 
inquired, “And where are the ladies supposed to 
wash their hands, Laverock? In your shower 
bath? ” 

At eight o’clock the visitors arrived, all four of 
them. . . . 

To young Laverock there was only one. . . . 

Here she rose, the star, radiant as any of her 
photographs strewn all over the country! Of her 
attire Archie (man*like) could only have described 
her hat (a black transparent corolla) and her 
shoes; atoms of cornflower-blue kid with anklets 
that would not have contained another girl’s 
wrist, they stepped daintily over cinder-path and 
grass to that Spartan table laid out in the open. 

. . Here she sat (she who was used to hear the 
buzz of interest going round the restaurant as 
she entered — “Look, there’s Lucy Joy ” . . .) 

Here was She (whose drink was Bubbly and whose 
meat was sole Colbert and p&che Melba) preparing 
to feast happily on Parkin’s chops and hotted-up 
beans ! 

The three young men, Archie’s friends (who had 
begun by eyeing the guests with that concentration- 
plus-embarrassment of a shy curate in the presence 
of Bazaar-opening Royalty), fell helpless victims 
to the charm not only of the famed Lucy but of 
her family as well. Frankie, on catching the name 
of the young city man, discovered that his younger 
brother had been at Dartmouth with him — this 


CLIMAX 


75 

made them into old friends even as the rieketty 
chairs were allotted and the black-handled knives 
taken up. 

The city man, being the Grandfather (aged 
twenty-nine) of the campites, “ carved ” the chops, 
and, with an ineffable glance towards the star- 
guest, asked, “May I give you beans? ” This 
nursery-wit was loudly applauded, and what re- 
mained of the ice was broken by Captain Smith’s 
inquiring diffidently of Mrs. Harrison, “ Miss Joy, 
shall you stay on ‘the screen,’ or whatever you 
call it, for good, or shall you go on the regular 
stage presently? ” 

“Ah! Very pretty! Rather ‘thought-out/ 
though?” cried Auntie gaily. “I can’t hope any 
one would really make the mistake even in the 
dusk with the light behind me. . . . But you know 
that Lucy is to go on the real stage presently, don’t 
you, Mr. Laverock? ... No potatoes, thanks — yes, 
yes, I will ! They’re not burnt, they’re delicious ! — 
Yes ; don’t you read your Periscope? ” 

“ Didn’t you see the latest excitement for our 
peaceful family circle, Laverock ” 

“Yes, the part in the new de Courville revue?” 

“ Are you really, Miss Joy ” 

“ What’s more, I’m having a scent named after 
me now ! ” the bijou-Beauty announced with pride. 
“ You know, like Chaminade or Mary Garden! 
People sniffing at a sachet and saying, ‘Oh, it’s 
Lucy J oy ’ ” 

“ Disgustin’ thought I call it ! ” from the snotty- 
brother, hewing bread. 

Then simultaneous queries from Mummie and 
Auntie, “ But what is the nicest hotel to stay at 


TG 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


in Paris just now? . . . Because you know Lucy’s 
Revue will be coming on over there ” 

“ Oh,” said young Laverock, evenly, “ she’s going 
away — going over to France, is she?” ( Going 
away . . . ) 

“Yes, and what she’ll be like w T hen she’s the 
prattle of Paris as well as the talk of London Town 
I shudder to think,” from Frankie. “Personally 
I shall have to, disown her, and the next time any- 
body in the ship asks me if I’m any relation, I shall 
simply say, 6 Oh, no, I never heard of the young 
woman, so snubs ! ’ ” 

Laughter, through which there rose a treble 
shriek from Mummie. “Oh! Talking of ships! 
Good Heavens ! It’s just reminded me. That note. 
From the Admiral ! ” 

(Involuntary glances about from Archie’s friends 
to see what had become of that London Mail.) 

“ Yes! The Admiral’s note! I promised him I’d 
let Lucy have it the very instant she got in. Then 
I never thought of it again. How ghastly of me! ” 
cried little Mrs. Joy. “ Here you are, my Pet ” 

She burrowed in her beaded bag and handed the 
note across the table. 

Lucy was sitting between Archie Laverock and 
the young city man — to whom assuredly it was the 
evening of his life, to be remembered and spoken 
of for many moons among his pals. “ There’s a 
fellow in our office who’s met Lucy Joy!” 

The Beauty-Girl took the, note, said prettily, 
“ Oh, may I open it? It’s probably about the race 
to-morrow, and I might have to telephone at 
once. ...” and tore open the envelope. 


CLIMAX 77 

She read the note. There escaped her a little, 
“ Oh, dear, Oh! ” of agitation. . . . 

“What is it, darling? Anything wrong? ” 
chirped her mother anxiously. 

For there were only two people at that table 
who guessed correctly at the contents of that note. 
Mrs. Harrison's blue eyes sent a quick, compre- 
hending glance across the table. Archie Laverock, 
outwardly imperturbable, told himself, “ Ha! The 
old boy's trumping my card, is he? " 

Lucy, pulling herself together, crammed the note 
into her brocade sack, and chirped back, “ Oh, no, 
Mummie! It — it's nothing that need be answered 
at once n 

“ What it is to belong to the Ruling Sex ! n 
broke in the semi-baritone of Frankie at the other 
end of the table. “ Wilt trifle? " He passed the 
sweet in a lordly dish quite unfamiliar to the 
campites, produced somewlience by Parkin. “ Jolly 
nice trifle, too. . . . Figure to ourselves, though, 
what would happen if I were not to s answer at 
once' any of our distinguished friends' messages! 
Dost remember Kipling’s Admiral and the Snotty? 
If Lucy'd been a boy, as she always wished she 
w r as, she’d have the Admiral in c the attitude of 
’< God Almighty to a cockroach / instead of ■” 

“ Used I to wish' I were a boy, Frankie? What 
extraordinary things one wants when one's quite 
. young. I'm sure I should never wish for anything 
so silly noio! ” declared the girl with a little uncer- 
tain laugh that drew upon her the eyes of the 
Arrant Rover. 

She avoided them with a completeness. . . . 


78 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


Archie had once been told by a woman that this 
avoidance was often more of a compliment than 
the tenderest return glance. . . . But was it so in 
this case? Was it? Tension tingled in the young 
man’s mind. The air was full of it, and the golden 
evening that was fading into dusk about the table. 
Archie felt maddeningly alive all over, to-night, 
conscious of every detail about him; the fresh 
smell of trodden grass, the voices of belated tennis- 
players further down the Sports ground, the rooks 
dotting the primrose sky, the flower-like patches of 
colour made by the women’s hats and frocks about 
the homely table, the plain dishes, the cottage 
nose-gays. ... At the same time he was conscious 
only of Her; her sweet bird’s-note twittering to 
one of his friends. . . . 

“ Who is going to sing to us? Didn’t Mr. Lave- 
rock say one of you had a banjo? ” 

u Ah, yes ! Wilt banj’? ” from Frankie, springing 
up. “ Can’t I lend a hand to clear away these 
things ” 

Ten minutes later all sign of the Lockhartian 
feast had disappeared. Archie and the others had 
dragged from his tent the two camp-beds, covered 
with numnas, to make a settee for the ladies; he 
had lighted the big Japanese lanterns that hung 
outside the tents less for use than for ornament. 
Above them the sky was now glooming into a soft 
mauve. Beyond the palings the lights of the station 
glowed ruby and emerald. ... It was cool and still 
and clear, but to Archie Laverock the whole air 
quivered with electricity. . . . 

He squatted next to Frankie on the rug close to 
her tiny feet. The other young men had brought 


CLIMAX 


79 

out mackintoshes to sit on. Captain Smith, settled 
on an old sugar-box, was plucking at the banjo- 
strings. 

“ Sing your Punjabi Love-son g,” Archie com- 
manded him, “ the one about the plaything of Love 

could the world stand still, and all that ” 

The docile Smith on the sugar-box gathered to- 
gether a twanging chord, lifted up a wistful tenor, 
and began — 

“ You’ve the tenderest laughing rose-hud lips that 
ever a man beguiled 

With thoughts of the Devil, the World and the 

He broke off. “No; sorry ” He twanged 

more chords, seeming hastily to review suitable 
verses from that interminable Serenade to which 
each Frontier Regiment adds its own translation — 

“ That’s the wrong one ” 

“ Oh, ivhy ? ” 

“ No, carry on ! ” 

“ Yes, do go on with it,” Mrs. Joy besought him. 
“ I’m sure it’s quite all right because poor Tom 
used to sing it ! What is that verse — 

“ Your feet are as dainty as feet can be, and your 
ankles a sight to see ” 

“ Which whenever you show, as you frequently do, 
it has often occurred to me ” 

took up Captain Smith, encouraged. . . . 

“ Though never a maid ivas so daintily made, or 
such delicate lingerie wore, 

1 wish I could think that nobody else had bought, 
you silk stockings before . . . ” 


80 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


Followed the verses about hair the colour of 
burnished gold that’s lit by the setting sun, and 
celebrating the tender curve of a dear young throat 
— while Archie Laverock, sitting at Her feet in 
the Spring twilight, listened to that song that was 
all of Her. . . . 

Little Princess! In her condescension she was 
here; pleased with the entertainment he had pro- 
vided for her ; Parkin’s dinner, Smith’s music. . . . 

Just a caprice, perhaps. Perhaps by to-morrow 
this much-run-after girl would have come to the 
end of the novelty of all this ; she’d be tired of the 
thought of a young man without a penny who 
pigged it in a tent, and ran about on errands for a 
motor-firm, his whole year’s salary amounting to 
what she could make by a month’s contract. To- 
morrow it might be all over. But he, Laverock, 
had scored over those other people to-night. 

“ Oh, Plaything of Love , could the world stand 
still,” 

chanted Captain Smith to the heart-rending run- 
ning snarl of the strings — 


“ and never the day he horn, 

And the cares of Life he chased away, as the night 
is chased hy the morn! 

Then, Queen of my heart, Vd hold yon fast, and 
Lord of your life would reign, 

And never a soul hut only I should rest in those 
arms again, 

And never a soul hut only I ” 


CLIMAX 


81 


The note hovered on a pause; a pause filled in 
by the distant calling of rooks, the nearer rumble 
of a train passing the station, by the clinking of 
dishes from wherever Parkin was washing up and 
(so Archie would have imagined) by the thumping 
of his own disturbed young heart, calling to Her 
who was so different from any girl whom he had 
yet met. . . . ( Plunk from the banjo.) 

should rest in those arms again!” (plunk, 

plunk) 

ended Captain Smith softly. 

“ Oh ! Thank you so much ! That is so pretty ! ” 
twittered Mrs. Joy. “ But, Madgie, used poor Tom 
to sing that last verse? ” 

“ No ; that’s a kind of encore verse by a man 
called Meade out there,” explained Captain Smith 
shifting the banjo., “Miss Joy, won’t you sing 
now? ” 

“ I can’t really. I’ve no voice ” 

“ Only just enough for a whole theatre, my pet? 
Oh, Lu, darling! She knows she has to sing for 
that retwc-man; she has the sweetest little voice! 
Not very strong perhaps, but ” 

“ Mummie, I can’t sing, . v . . Please, I am not 
going to sing.” 

“You will dance, though, won’t you?” Archie 
turned his head quietly up towards her. “ Where’s 
the gramophone, Smith? Put on In Lilac-Time ; 
that’s a good record.” 

They danced under the stars ; danced on the turf 
bordering the cinder-track. Captain Smith waltzed 


82 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


with Mummie; Auntie’s magpie black-and-white 
gleamed against the arm of the young city man; 
the railway lad cavorted burlesque-wise with the 
Snotty. But as soon as Archie’s long brown 
fingers had taken to themselves the tiny ones of 
Lucy Joy, he knew that this was going to be “ the ” 
dance of his life. 

It reminded him, somehow, of a dance he’d been 
to during the war ; one of those nights when nothing 
seemed to matter, because one was going back to 
France again by the morning train, and the gloomy 
vault of Victoria Station might quite well be 
one’s last glimpse on earth of England Home and 
Beauty. He remembered that with racing pulses, 
as the dance eddied with them for a moment into an 
empty ante-room, he, Archie, had stooped as he 
danced and had, very quickly, pressed a kiss into 
the warm white throat of his partner. . . . But 
this girl with whom he was dancing at this moment 
was so tiny, she only reached to the top button of 
his waistcoat! Besides, she w^as so different, she 
was so different! Different from every girl in 
the whole world ! . . . 

For a space, while his heart could have pulsed 
six beats, he waltzed in silence, and his feelings 
were a strand of three twined and special cords, 
dragging him to her, tying him to her. Three cords 
of feeling; so contradictory! 

That, at least, is what they would be called by 
these judges who decree that one sort of person 
cannot experience two sorts of emotion. (As if 
roses and poppies could not grow in the same gar- 
den! And at the same time.) . . . 

So Archie danced zestfully as if to the very pipes 


CLIMAX 


83 


of Pan because he guided on his arm a partner 
young and sweet and crushable, holding for him the 
same lure that had the girl whose throat he had 
kissed, yes, and the same attraction would have 
been hers had he not known Lucy’s name or heard 
her voice — for this was Desire. 

Simultaneously, he glowed with that tender 
protectiveness which a man feels towards the girl 
whom, after consideration, he would make his wife. 
No mistaking this. No counterfeit; no substitute, 
either too pale or too gaudy, but the identical, pure 
passion that she would inspire in the heart of the 
most scrupulous young man who had never roved. 
For this was what is known as Red Love. 

More than these other two, knitting them into 
one, was the third, the Key -feeling of this particular 
affair. It was the attraction of a Beauty to which 
the crowd, that liydra-headed beast, is openly 
attracted; it was the stimulation, the aura sur-. 
rounding the fact that she was “The” Lucy Joy. 
It was the baffling atmosphere that in turn gilds 
or enshrouds the noted name, either of Arms or the 
Stage; it was the Glamour of the Pedestal; yes, 
that was the charm ! Glamour ! . . . 

“ In Lilac-time , in Lilac-time ■” sang Frankie 

to the music as he swung past his sister and her 
partner. 

Archie spoke down to her through the lan- 
guorous tune. “ I say,” he began, “ When are you. 
going to Paris? ” 

“ I don’t know, Mr. Laverock. Soon, I expect. 
Why? ” 

Archie, circling with her, told her, “ 1 shall be 
going away soon myself.” 


84 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


“ Shall you? To Paris? ” 

“ No. To Wales. I’ve a job on. To teach an 

old gentleman there to drive a car ” 

u How interesting/’ said Lucy Joy. 

“ Do you think so? ” said young Laverock, anger 
suddenly flaming up in him again. Why, why had 
he to put up with these “ jobs on ”? Why couldn’t 
he follow her to Paris if he wanted? Why hadn’t 
he got leisure and unlimited means and a Preillage 
Court at the back of him? 

“ It’s a rotten job,” he said curtly, into the 
pretty, drawling melody, “but the old boy’s an 
uncle or something to my firm’s people, and he’s 
got pots of money, too, and he wrote up yesterday 
to my firm and said he’d like them to send down 
the best man they had.” 

“ So — so they’re sending you? ” 

“ I’m at their beck and call — They’re at his beck 
and call,” returned Archie more cheerfully, “ be- 
cause they can’t afford to dream of losing any 
money. No rich people can. My firm’s so well off, 
you see. ...” 

“ Horrible,” said the girl on his arm, “ to be at 

people’s beck and call like that ” 

“ Well ! You are, aren’t you? ” Archie reminded 
her not too kindly, for he was stung, extra-sensitive 
to-night. “ Of course it pays you better and all 

that ” Here he thought it was ghastly, the 

things men found themselves saying to girls, just 
because they wanted to be talking of something 
utterly different, and mustn’t ! . . . “ But your 
cinema people and your stage-managers and all 
that, they arrange what you’ve got to do, I 
suppose? ” 


CLIMAX 


85 


“ It’s so different for a girl,” the miniature 
Beauty told him defiantly, as those absurd blue kid 
shoes glided and “ hesitated ” in step to his boots. 
“ Quite different — I — I could stop whenever I like, 
you see.” (Petulantly) “ Couldn’t I?” as he 
didn’t answer. “ Couldn’t I? ” 

“ Could you ? ” said Archie Laverock, sore — and 
curt. 

She waltzed silently to the end of the turf, then 
as they turned she threw at him with a sort of 
childish challenge, with something of the pride 
with which she’d announced that a new perfume 
was to be given her name, “ A girl can get married, 
can’t she? to somebody who’ll — who’ll give her 
a wonderful time, and let her do whatever she 
likes.” 

“ Can she? ” 

“ Why do you say that like that, Mr. Laverock? ” 

“ Like what? ” ' 

“ That. As it happens,” added Lucy Joy, tilting 
her egg-shaped chin, “ I had a proposal this very 
evening.” 

“ I know you had,” said Archie Laverock quickly, 
missing his step, then correcting it. “ It’s in your 
bag now.” 

“ How did you know? How did you know?” 

“ I knew.” He set shoulders and jaw, “ What 
are you going to say to it?” 

“What?” 

“ What are you going to say to it? Accept?” 

Lucy, with the defiance of a pecking finch, de- 
manded, a What has that got to do with you?” 

“ Nothing, of course. Only— well, you told me, 
yourself, the first part of it ! ” he reminded her. 


86 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


“ Rather natural, isn’t it, that I should want to 
know the rest? ” 

The urge in his heart began to break through 
the steadiness of his tone. The girl, hearing, drew 
a quicker breath. She countered, looking up, away, 
over his shoulder. “ Is it? ” 

“ Yes.” Young Laverock suddenly dropped the 
quarrelling note. Softly now he muttered, “ Tell 
me what you’re going to say to that man’s 
proposal? ” 

“Why? Why should I?” 

“ Because I want to know,” said he, and let his 
heart go into his voice at last. “ I want to know 
, . . Lucy!” 

At that she made a little movement, involuntary, 
sudden as if she had been struck. . . . 

Auntie, passing that moment in the dance, caught 
a vivid startling glimpse; to the Rover’s profile, 
clean-cut and dark, against the lambent rose of 
the nearest Japanese lantern there looked up the 
face of Lucy, its innocent oval warmly lighted 
by the pink radiance, lips parted, eyes wide upon 
the young man, it was the face of a girl unmis- 
takably adoring. . . . 

“ Good Heavens ! ” gasped Mrs. Harrison to 
herself, and knew not whether to be delighted or 
appalled. “ That child is now waking up ! But 
is he reliable? Or is he One of Those? ” 

Archie also held a question, so to speak, to his 
own head. Had the girl looked at him . . . like 
that? Or was it his own fatuous imagination? 

For a trait well-defined in the Rover’s character 
— was that the first sign of inclination towards 
him on the part of any woman — found him para- 


CLIMAX 


87 


doxically but genuinely incredulous. His pal, 
now (that well-meaning but physically quite 
charmless son of the motor-firm) was ever ready 
to confide to his fellows : “ That Little Miss So-and- 
So is getting dashed keen on me, Fm afraid. I shall 
have to sheer off a point or two. One can’t he too 
careful about these girls starting to get fond of 
one ” 

Some of that caution (superfluous in his pal’s 
case) might often have been no bad thing for young 
Laverock — or for the girl of the moment. 

However! The next thing that happened was 
that this girl, Lucy, changed, in a second, that 
betraying look upon her face. Quite gallantly the 
little creature snatched at what had been dropping 
from her, namely her teasing levity of Everyday. 

. . . To Archie’s question she tossed off one 

word — 

“ Guess ! ” 

— So lightly that boy (though wiser than most 
boys) was baffled again, could not be sure, after 
all, what to think. Did not know that the girl, all 
trembling secretly, had much ado to follow the 
promptings of the voice that has cried to genera- 
tion after generation of women, “ Conceal , conceal.” 
Not always mistakenly. 

In this case it was more politic than she sus- 
pected. For at that moment before — when he won- 
dered, “Did she look at me? No! Is she, 
though?” — a certain chill (not entirely unknown 
to him already) had begun to creep upon her 
lover. 

“Oh, Lord!” had thought, dismayed, that Ar- 
rant Rover. 


88 


THE AEEANT EOYEE 


But now the chill left him; for she, the girl, 
achieved a brighter, more bird-like twitter than 
before. 

“ Seriously! Joking apart!” she mocked. 
“ D’you always launch these paraly singly heart- 
searching questions at the unfortunate individuals 
you’ve met exactly four times? You weird young 
man ! . . . As a matter of fact I haven’t made up 
my mind yet.” 

“ Whether I’m * weird ’ or not? ” he muttered 
uncertainly. 

“ No. Whether or not I’m going to accept the 
Ad — this last proposal, I mean. Men always do 
expect one to settle in one brief instant of time 
whether one means to marry them for Life! As 
for you ” 

“ Yes? Yes?” 

a As for you, Mr. Laverock, I think you’re just 
a seething mass of the most unabashed curiosity 
I ever met ! Even if I had settled what I was going 
to do, what makes you so sure I’d tell you ” 

So she teased and mocked and tantalized, and he 
could get nothing out of her. No, not by the 
time the gramophone-record had come to an end, 
and begun to spin round jarringly, to be snatched 
off by Captain Smith. Not after Frankie, ex- 
claiming at the time of night, had begun to marshal 
his women-folk off to the station. . . .Not during 
the short walk down the field to the station, when 
the Glamour-girl had tripped along beside the 
Eover as close to him as in the dance, so close 
that the scent of her filled his senses and that the 
light touch of her against his coat kept him all 
a-thrill. She would not tell him what he fumed 


CLIMAX 89 

to know, laughing still, “ What’s it got to do with 
you? Why d’you ask? ” 

Why did he ask, indeed? It was not a question 
that he could have answered straight away, except 
with that non-explanatory “ Because I want to 
know.” Why must he know? Did he, truly, want 
her himself as he’d never wanted a girl before? 
Then why that chill when he thought she’d looked 
response at him? On the other hand, why this 
stabbing jealousy because another man * . . 

“ Tell me what you’re going to do about it,” 
he pestered softly, a-flame because she laughed. 

Why did she laugh at him? Because the novelty 
of his picnic courtship had now worn off? Didn’t 
she care a rap? Then why that look just now? 
Did she care a little? Then why this manner now? 
Did she? Didn’t she? 

To the last moment he was kept in this suspense 
by that tiny Tease. Even so she skipped into the 
lighted railway-carriage ahead of her people, who 
clustered on the platform, made their farewells, 
and promises to meet again (“ Good-bye! Ever so 
many thanks ! We don’t know when we’ve enjoyed 
anything so much ! And now do come over and see 
us. Mr. Laverock, you’re coming on Sunday 
again, aren’t you? ”), even then there was nothing 
from Her but a rather mischievous blue glance, 
and the upward tilt of the egg-shaped chin, another 
ripple of laughter. . . . 

No answer. . . . 

The train back to W aterloo had, like a long fiery 
dragon, swallowed up his Princess; with clashing 
and electric flashing it reft her away and fled, its 
wake of pale smoke, sequined in sparks, trailing 


90 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


across the dark signal boxes, the telegraph-posts, 
the lights of ruby and emerald, the purple 
night-sky. 

Then, then at last, after She was gone, Archie 
Laverock found an answer to all his questions of 
the last pulsing hour. 

“ The ” Lucy Joy, the pet of every illustrated 
paper in England, the sight to turn an old man 
young, the run-after Screen-Star who was now to 
become the Revue-Favourite and to rise from 
success to giddy success in London, Paris, New 
York, the exquisite Pocket-Celebrity who could 
probably marry a Duke, let alone a mere Admiral ! 
if she would. . . . She had left her answer with 
this obscure young motor-expert. 

For as the Rover strode up the dewy field back 
to the tents, he clenched his hands and dug them 
down into the pockets of his jacket. In the left- 
hand pocket his fingers encountered a crumple of 
something soft and unfamiliar. He pulled it out; 
by the lantern-light he looked at it. 

Lord ! How had it got there? Had she, as she 
walked beside him, tucked it secretly into his 
jacket-pocket? 

Anyhow here it was. A tiny square of corn- 
flower-blue georgette patterned with dots of vivid 
rose-colour, all crushed up and faintly scented with 
Mysterieuse. 

The girl’s handkerchief. 


CHAPTER SIX 


ANTI-CLIMAX 

<e What then in Love can women do ? 

If we grow fond they shun us, 

And when we fly them, they pursue, 
But leave us when they’ve won us.” 


— Beggar's Opera. 


HE result of this was to put the young man, 
in boyish parlance, “ clean dead off ” 



He had two days in which to realize this 
fully before he saw his Lucy again. More than 
time enough. To the last, however, he hoped that 
he was somehow mistaken. Why should this sort 
of thing have happened again? Already it had 
happened, of course. The Rover didn’t like to 
count how often. He merely felt sore and resentful 
because it was so. Everything was always so 
delightful up to a certain point. Then somehow — 
he himself never could say exactly how — every- 
thing went and got itself spoilt. Infernal disap- 
pointment! To feel that this time you’d found 
something so thrillingly different , something that 
would change the whole of Life and your own 
character for you, and then— to have it crumble 
in your hands, leaving nothing but the sick terror 
of being tied to the ruin ! 

“ Still,” thought young Laverock as he wheeled 
out Captain Smith’s motor-cycle for his Sunday 
expedition, “ it may turn out all right when I get 


there- 


of 


92 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


He came upon Lucy just before he reached the 
blue bungalow. She was in the pine-wood, gather- 
ing fir-cones from the soft terra-cotta carpet into a 
wide, flat basket that she held. 

“ Oh ! You ? ve come! ” she cried in a little new- 
sounding voice. “ We didn’t think you could be 
here so soon ! ” 

“ No, as a matter of fact I am a bit early,” re- 
turned young Laverock gravely and politely across 
the motor-cycle. His first glance at her told him 
the worst. 

It was all over. 

She was tremulously glad to see him. 

Composure, self-possession, coquetry, sureness of 
her own Little-Queendom had fallen from about 
her. With it had vanished that aura of “ The ” 
Lucy Joy, the second Mary Pickford, the Star, and 
the rest of it. That Glamour-girl had gone. 

Here in her place stood a figure how small and 
wispy against the aisle of tall brown pine-trunks! 
dressed in a typical “ Little-Girl ” frock of chintz, 
blue-and-white as the glimpses of Spring sky 
beyond the high boughs. With that bodice cut so 
straight and childish, that quaint skirt flapping 
about slim calves, that shock of pale-gilt hair lifted 
by the breeze, she might have been nine instead 
of — what was she? Nineteen. Only just out of the 
school-room anyhow. No artist, either. An ordi- 
nary pretty little girl of the New-Poor class, who, 
by a sheer stroke of luck, had become a celebrity 
in her tinsel fashion, a Nouvelle-riche. “Just an 
ordinary little girl/’ was her knell in Archie’s heart. 
He had to be quite sure of something, though. 


ANTI-CLIMAX 93 

Gently he said, “ I say, you left something at 
our camp on Friday night.” 

“ Did I? ” Unmistakably conscious, the bird-like 
voice. 

He looked at her. No mistaking it. She knew. 

He took it out of his pocket, the little pitiful 
gay favour. 

“ Oh,” said Lucy Joy, looking at it. “ Yes, that’s 
mine ” 

No hope, then, that it might have been Mummie’s 
or Auntie’s, might have got in there by mistake. 
Her doing. 

Shy and flushed, she glanced up at him — Yes, 
expectantly. She was expecting him to say 
6i Lucy ! ” in the tone in which he’d muttered it a 
couple of nights ago. 

Helpless, the young man said nothing. Just an 
ordinary little girl in a blue frock who would have 
been keen on his getting fond of her. Why did 
they . . . ? Why ? . . . 

Bewilderment, incredulity, dread, swept in swift 
waves over the face of the girl. . . . 

Could she be dreaming this? Wasn’t she “ The ” 
Lucy Joy w T ho always had everything she wanted? 
And now, this first thing that she really did want, 

. . . Was it to be withheld? But ! This 

wasn’t like Life as she’d been brought up to it! 
This wasn’t like films either ! This “ close-up ” 
was something too horrible. . . . 

It was in fact her first glimpse of Beality, which 
is no treat to any girl. (Or too often not.) 

“ Hush, hush,” whispered the pines. “ Hush 

. .” He had nothing to tell her. 


94 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


Still battling against the truth of it, the poor 
mite told herself he “ dared not . . . just because 
of her being Lucy Joy . . . ” and made her puny 
effort against Fate. 

She tilted her chin, forced herself to smile re- 
gally, and said, “ You may keep it.” 

“ What? ” blurted out Archie in consternation. 

“ My handkerchief. You may keep it if you like. 
As a sort of mascot, a souvenir, you know; to 
remember •” 

Her voice trailed away at sight of the look on 
the Rover’s face. 

He said blankly, “ Oh, thanks very much,” and 
stuffed the thing back into his pocket. 

Alone the Power that made them both could have 
told which w T as the more wretched at that moment, 
the girl or the boy. 

It is a pity Dante did not describe afternoon tea 
in Purgatory. Quotations from this are needed to 
convey that meal of Archie’s in the Joys’ flower- 
garden, where the finches twittered about the bird- 
bath and the family were unwontedly silent, only 
the eyes of Mummie and of Auntie urging, “ What 
is the matter? What has gone wrong? What , what 
is it? ” 

He left as soon as he decently might. Next day 
he was due to go down to Wales, he told them. This 
was his good-bye. His face, as he said it, should 
have made even Mummie feel positively sorry for 
the young man. 

And what of the girl? 

Upstairs to her room at the Blue Bungalow fled 


ANTI-CLIMAX 


95 


Lucy Joy as soon as he was gone. With a gesture 
such as she would never achieve for the camera, 
she flung herself down, half against her pillows, 
half against the soft shoulder of her mother, and 
sobbed for one impossibility on which she had set 
her heart. Copiously she wept, but sincerely. 
The girl, for the first time miserable as a woman, 
meant every broken word that was received with 
such anguished sympathy by the two who, loving 
her, could do nothing for their darling here. 

“ Mummie ! Auntie ! I cared for him ! I cared, 
Mummie! I thought he did. I was sure he did! 
He was s — s — s — so d — different the other night, 
Auntie ! ” 

“ They always are,” murmured Mrs. Harrison 
brokenly from her pitch on the rug beside the bed. 
“ He was One of Those. They don’t seem to be 
able to help it. They let you get so near them. 
Then they’re off! Then — well, I don’t believe 

they’re ever really very happy themselves ” 

“ I hope he’ll be miserable as long as he lives,” 
declared Mrs. Joy through small set teeth. 
“ Brute ! Brute to my child ! ” 

Her child sobbed* “ What’s so cruel is that I 
never did care for anybody before, Mummie! I 
was p — p — perfectly happy because I didn’t know 
what happiness was! Oh, I’d know now!” The 
small warm tear-drenched creature writhed in her 
mother’s arms. “ It’s him! ” 

“ In, darling ! r They ’ never make good 
hus ” 

“Who w — w — wants a Good Husband? I’ve 
heard you say it yourself, Auntie ! Only — b -before 
I met him I thought I was having such a lovely 


96 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


time, with my career, and going ev — everywhere 
. . . Sir John sending peaches and orch — orchids! 
And the Admiral ! ” 

She blew her minute nose before wailing 
poignantly, “ I should have said 6 Yes ’ to the 
Admiral if I hadn’t met him! I — I liked the Ad- 
miral ! And he’d have had you to live with me at 

Treillage Court, Mummie ” 

“ My baby ” 

“ And Frankie he’d have helped to get on! 

And I didn’t think I’d noticed the baldness and 
fat! I thought men were so much kinder when 
they weren’t young! Oh! So they are! ” mourned 
Lucy, hoarse with crying. “ So they are. It 
doesn’t make any difference, though. Something’s 
made me feel I couldn’t pup — pup — possibly marry 
the Admiral now , Auntie ! ” 

Mrs. Harrison thought, “ Then there’s something 
saved out of the fire.” As she unlaced her niece’s 
shoes, loosened the grey silk stockings at heels and 
toes, massaged the feet soft to her fingers as the 
bodies of tiny moles, the elder woman’s unspoken 
comments ran, “ That young scamp has done one 
bit of good in his life at all events. Thank God 
the child will never put up with anything less 
than the Real Thing ! ” 

“ I fiever imagined anything 1 — 1 — like this hap- 
pening to me — me! Just one little lovely flash of 
happiness in one’s life! Then all black forever 

after ! So terrible ” 

“ I know, my pet, I know.” 

“ because I shall never be able to feel like 

that about anybody else or look at anybody else, 
Mummie ! Not after him , Auntie! ” 


ANTI-CLIMAX 


97 


u Hush, hush,” whispered the pines outside the 
window. Mrs. Joy and Mrs. Harrison said nothing. 

They had never been considered clever, or even 
sensible women. They were, however, wise enough 
for one thing. They knew what must come. Not 
next month, perhaps, nor the month after, but not 
too long hence. Already it was decreed which 
stranger was to console this heart-broken child for 
the defection of her first love. 

That unknown young man was somewhere in 
the world at that moment. At that moment he 
was engaged in some everyday act of his life: 
Hunting for his collar-stud, maybe, or, stuffing his 
special mixture down into his pipe, or bending 
his head to sniff at the spray of syringa which 
some girl was even then fastening into the button- 
hole of his Norfolk jacket. 

Whoever he was, whatever he was doing, how- 
ever far away, one thing was certain: Time was 
bringing him nearer with every tick of the watch 
on Lucy’s bracelet. 

This Mummie and Auntie knew ; knew also that 
it was no use saying a word about him yet. Let 
the child have her cry out over her Arrant Ro- 
ver. . . . — Who, the wretch ! was packing up, no 
doubt, for fresh fields and pastures new. 


































PART II 
BOREDOM 

(THE HEART OF WALES: JUNE) 


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CHAPTER SEVEN 


HE MEETS THE GIRL 

“ A maid whom there were none to praise. 

And very few to love.” 

— Wordsworth. 

A RCHIE LAVEROCK, for the first three days 
that he spent in Wales, was bored beyond 
sobs. 

He had, as have all vividly-en joying* and receptive 
natures, an immense capacity for being bored. 

So had the weather, for boring. 

Rain had met him with a cool slap in the face 
as he crossed the Welsh border. Rain had been 
his portion in this place ever since. Soft per- 
sistent breezes, blowing in from the coast, bore 
on their wings cloud after cloud of wet that 
(moving up to follow the course of the River) 
formed a procession of slow spectres, grey-clad and 
diaphanous, familiar enough to any Welsh-valley- 
dweller. Slate-grey mist shut out any glimpse of 
the mountains ; the woods below them were smoth- 
ered in what appeared to be drifts of soaking 
cottonwool. On the sodden green common, just 
outside the village where the Rover had pitched 
his abode, the rain had made pools that spread, 
bright and ever -widening, above the mossy turf, 
around the boulders dark with wet, around the 
aeroplane-wheels of his dwelling. . . . 

Aeroplane-wheels? Dwelling? What dwelling, 
and why wheels? 


101 


102 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


Because liis present quarters were the home most 
suitable of all to the Archie — or Arrant Rover — 
type. Its name, though not painted on the front 
door, was “ The Navarac ” which is a very special 
sort of caravan. 

May I describe it? 

On the two pairs of these wdieels, shock- 
absorbers and all, a chassis is fixed. From the 
chassis rises the caravan, with its body of three-ply 
wood, painted aluminum -grey, its surprisingly 
large windows, curtained in green casement cloth, 
its ventilators, its Pullman roof. You mount by a 
short ladder of which the sides are aeroplane-struts, 
for, wherever possible, this roving home has been, 
constructed out of war-material. You can draw 
your* stair-case in after you ; and inside those walls, 
gleaming'*white as the inner lid of a new water- 
colour box, everything is compactness and com- 
fort — the couch (which you can turn up against 
the further end to make room for the Bridge-table 
for four), the delightful little kitchen-range (as 
built for showmen of circuses), the tiny electric- 
light with its own plant, the cupboard-room which 
any housewife would envy, the clock set into the 
wall above the door, the small-model gramophone, 
the generously-proportioned kettle, the cocktail 
shaker, there lacks nothing here after which the 
soul of man (and of woman, if the truth were 
known) has not yearned in dreams of an ideal 
existence. 

Comfortable bed, board, and roof— but not, oh, 
not tied down forever in the same spot, among the 
same people! Fresh country, if one pleases, all 
around one every day! And fresh faces! The 


HE MEETS THE GIRL 


103 


gipsy’s life; open air and movement, plus luxuries 
of cleanliness which to the Twentieth Centurion 
are necessity! This^ for the present, was the life 
of Archie Laverock. 

Better even than being forever on the road in 
cars, for then he had always to return, at night, 
to the old address of his camp. “ The Navarac ” 
knew no address. Before he was tired of one 
pitch, he was off to another. Always on the road — 
to Somewhere Else! Woodlands, commons, 
streams, flat country, hilly districts, Archie had 
sampled them all in a day. Tired of the leafy 
valley, he could turn to the mountain lane slotted 
like a ribbon in between rock and heath. Even if 
his map showed him that a road led to nowhere 
in particular, he could try it just the same. For, 
untrammelled as he was, his vagrancy had a 
purpose. 

He was testing, for that firm of his, under all 
reasonable conditions, the newly-designed coupling 
that linked “ The Navarac ” to the small tractor- 
car in front of it. And the reason that this cara- 
van now rested near this God-forsaken puddle of 
a Welsh village, was the other job, the mission 
which he had described to Lucy Joy that evening 
(not so long ago, but seeming ages since!) at the 
camp. This village was the nearest known place to 
Rhos, an old white house buried rather than built 
behind w T oods a mile away. At Rhos lived the old 
gentleman (Mr. Rice-Mathews his name was) who 
was so rich, and a connection of marriage with the 
firm, and who had sent for “ their best young man ” 
to teach him, in his old age, how to drive a motor- 
car. . . . 


104 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


Everything about him sounded as if he had some 
sort of a bee in his bonnet, Archie thought. He 
wondered what the old boy would be like. . . . 

On the arrival of “ The Navarac ” at the Com- 
mon, a child brought him a note down from Rhos. 
It regretted that Mr. Rice-Mathews was to be kept 
in bed by Doctor’s orders for a couple of days, and 
added that he would let Mr. Laverock know as 
soon as he was about again and ready for his 
lesson. The note was in a feminine hand (a nurse’s 
probably) signed “ per pro E. Rice-Mathews. 
M.R.M.” 

Rather casual, thought Mr. Laverock. 

Anyhow, it was raining too hard to give anybody 
a driving lesson. 

It went on raining. 

Archie Laverock made up the fire in the little 
circus-range, got up what he called “ quite a cheer- 
ful fug” inside his abode, lighted his pipe, and 
took up a book. 

Within forty-eight hours, during which it rained 
without ceasing, he had read right through the 
only three novels with which the caravan-bookshelf 
had been provided by its owner (another partner 
in Archie’s firm). There Ayltvin (that book all 
about how lovely Wales was in the summer, good 
Lord!). Pointed Roofs (what this was about he 
never fathomed), and one of those volumes about 
Sylvia Scarlett. 

The Rover wished that the fellow who wrote 
these would realize how, after a certain time, one 
got sick of the name of a young woman, always 
the same young woman. . . . 

It rained on. 


HE MEETS THE GIRL 


105 


He came to an end of all the pipe-tobacco and 
all the cigarettes he had brought with him; he 
put on his old trench-coat, splashed forth to the 
village, and renewed his stock. The old lady who 
kept the corner-shop knew no English beyond the 
words, “ It’s raining ! It’s very raining ! ” Archie 
thought she had learnt up the greeting most fre- 
quently apt. . . . For still it rained. 

He took a tramp in the opposite direction, along 
four miles of ill-kept, uphill road, bordered by 
stone hedges and sloping mountain-field that 
faded off into the inevitable slate-grey mist; he 
passed one white cottage, met two children with 
sacks over their heads, and several drenched hens. 
What a neighbourhood! 

Always it rained and rained; steadily, serenely. 
Not a cloud-burst, but a calm and masterful down- 
ward drench that (like some engine snoring at 
its happiest) seemed as if it could never leave off. 

Through this deluge he returned to that ark, 

The Navarac.” No use pushing on anywhere, as 
at any moment this Mr. Rice-Mathews might sum- 
mon him up to Rhos. 

Absolutely nothing to look at, out of the caravan- 
windows. He looked round inside, but he knew 
every neat detail of that interior by heart. Perhaps 
it was then, in intervals of Aylwin , Pointed Roofs , 
and making up the fire, that he began looking, in 
a kind of odd, wondering, detached way, at him- 
self. Yes, at himself, almost as if this Archie Lave- 
rock were another fellow altogether. 

Why was he never satisfied? With his luck? 

He was lucky; yes, he always had been lucky. 
Lucky at school, always got on well there. Lucky 


106 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


in his guardian, his dead mother’s brother, who 
had, during his lifetime, allowed him plenty of 
pocket money, and had given him more or less 
the run of the place in the holidays. Lucky during 
the war — by Jove, yes! Lucky to come through 
as he had, looking at some of the places he’d been 
in. Lucky in his job with that firm; a job in a 
million, really, and one that suited him down to 
the ground. Lucky in being chosen to bring “ The 
Navarac ” down here (if only it would stop rain- 
ing). Lucky, that was, in his friends; the son of 
the firm, the campites, all of them. Lucky in 
everything really . . . Except, of course, cards — 
Ah! there Laverock’s extraordinary runs of bad 
luck were a positive by-word. Everybody chipped 
him about the kind of hands he got; said it must 
mean that he was jolly lucky in Love. 

But was he? 

It seemed to young Laverock at that moment 
that young Laverock had always been, if anything, 
indifferent to women. 

Yes. He could swear that he had never chased 
them. At times they turned up in his life. Could 
he help it? They had just been there somehow, 
don’t you know? Complications of one sort and 
another had ensued. Not his doing, not anybody’s 
doing. It seemed to him now (as it had seemed 
before now) as if the last of these complications 
w r as over, and as if there would never be any more. 
A good thing! None of them had been worth it. 
Nothing, what he expected. 

What he did expect he didn’t know. . . . 

Only at the bottom of his heart this Arrant 
Rover had sometimes the queerest feeling, one that 


HE MEETS THE GIRL 


107 


persisted. The feeling that somewhere in the world 
there was a woman waiting. Not a woman he knew 
at all. Some girl, different — ah, how different 
from any he had ever met! was somewhere fond 
of him, dreaming of him constantly, of him, Archie 
Laverock! surrounding him with thoughts of 
tenderness that took the form of great soft dove- 
coloured wings folded all about him. 

The wildest fancy, of course; quite absurd. 

What he really 'wanted was somebody to talk 
to in this dashed caravan. 

He wished to goodness he could have brought 
old Smith along with him on this trip, but old 
Smith had business connected with sitting for 
hours in the immense ante-rooms of the India 
Office. . . . 

He wished he’d got a dog. . . . 

He hardly realized what depths of boredom this 
admitted. 

For young Laverock had never been what has 
been described as “ dogward.” He had neither 
loved nor owned among the creatures w T ho were 
in part fellow-sportsmen, in part idols to so many 
of his pals. No ; Archie had never fully understood 
those men who found complete companionship in 
the society of an Airedale or of a fox-terrier and 
who talked to these in speech of a melting tender- 
ness only suited (the Rover considered) to some 
loved women. Now he envied these dog-lovers. 
They had found something that he had not. 
Friendship without disillusionment. For what 
does “put one off” nine times out of ten? Some- 
thing the friend says; some jarring image, some 
unsympathetic remark at the wrong moment, some 


108 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


phrase ill-chosen. Dogs have no words; only the 
upward glance of slavish worship that seems to 
hang upon the master (who in reality hangs upon 
that regard). Dog-worshippers have said, “If he 

could only speak ! ” Archie imagined that if 

some of these adored animals did break into human 
speech there would probably be heard the whining 
complaints of a selfish over-indulged child, or the 
edged snap of a jealous mistress. But dogs never 
do speak. Thus there is put into their mouths 
only the phrase that the adoring idealizing master 
wishes could be voiced. Illusion lives. . . . 

Yes; Archie thought he’d have to see about 
getting a dog. 

A bull-terrier was the breed he fancied; white, 
with shapely flanks and pointed ears. People say 
they’re so deaf. . . . He wondered. . . . 

As he did so, he rose to thrust a bit of coal 
between the bars of the range, and he glanced again 
out of the window above the door. 

There, suddenly, framed by that window, and set 
against that ground of drowned purple, drenched 
grey, and weeping green, there approached in the 
rainscape a half-oval of fresh colour. Taken 
merely as colour, it w T as pleasant enough — a vivid 
and glowing rose; deeper than pink, paler than 
scarlet. Taken for what it signified (health and 
youth ) , it was equally agreeable. It was the flush 
driven by rain and exercise into the face of a girl. 

“Mr. Laverock?” inquired the voice of this girl 
from the steps of the caravan. 

Archie tucked his pipe into his pocket, and 
opened the door. 

“ I am Laverock,” he said ; “ won’t you ” 


HE MEETS THE GIRL 


109 


“ No, thanks. I won’t come in,” there cut him 
short the very business-like voice of the girl with 
her foot on the lowest step. 

He saw that she was very tall and slim, dressed 
in a long brown oilskin with an oilskin cap pulled 
over her dark eyes and dripping on to her shoul- 
ders. Of her face little was to be seen but that 
flush of live carnation between wet gleaming cap 
and coat. She might have been twenty-three, but 
her voice was the voice of a woman older than her 
years, a woman accustomed to give orders; cool, 
dominant, detached. Especially detached. No 
flicker of interest did she display in the super- 
caravan (object of poignant interest all along the 
London-Shrewsbury road), none in its inhabitant. 

She said next, a surprising thing. 

“ I have come to apologize to you.” 

Young Laverock, standing just above her, framed 
by the caravan door, looked down bewildered. 

“ To apol ” 

“Yes; and I didn’t mean I’d ‘come,’ I should 
have said ‘ I was sent ’ to apologize.” 

“ But ” began the young man. 

The young Tvoman, however, was of those who 
do not allow the sentences of others to be finished. 

“ I came from Mr. Rice-Mathews,” she explained 
brusquely. “ He’s my grandfather, you know. He 
meant you to be asked up to dinner the day you 
arrived here. But— well, I stopped your coming.” 

The Rover, at the door, gazed down upon this 
forbidding girl in oilskin, backed by the down- 
pour. “ You stopped my coming? But you hadn’t 
even seen me! ” he explained. “ What had I done? 
why should you ” 


110 THE ARRANT ROVER 

“ It wasn’t anything you’d done. It was just 
anybody, not you,” the girl explained quickly. 
“ You see, my grandfather is really very delicate. 
He simply has to be kept quiet sometimes, though 
he doesn’t like it. There’s only me to look after 
him now, you see. I think he’s all right to-day. 
And he was annoyed with me for having put you 
off. So I told him I’d make my apologies.” 

“ Oh, please don’t,” Archie began, smiling. “ It’s 
absolutely ” 

But again she broke in, in that cool detached 
voice that evidently covered pique at having been 
sent, like a scolded child, upon this errand. “ And 
will you please come up to Rhos to-night instead? 
We dine at eight.” 

“ Oh, thank you. How very good of you to come, 
and in all this wet. Please tell Mr. Riee-Mathews 
that I shall be delight ” 

“ You know the house? ” she took up, brusquely. 
“ It’s the first lodge-gate, white, on the left as you 
leave the village. Good-afternoon ” — and before 
he could speak she stepped lightly off the ladder, 
swung away along the water-course which had 
been a road, and was swallowed up in the mist. 

“ Well T No danger of any ‘ Romance ’ starting 
in that quarter ! ” thought the Rover as he dressed 
for dinner; slipping in studs that were a gift from 
(let us say May, Nineteen Fifteen) and hunting for 
silk-socks (the last pair of that half-dozen bestowed 
upon him by a kind-of-adopted-Aunt). His silk 
braces he had actually bought himself, not caring 
for the very Burlington Arcade-looking pair sent 
upon his last birthday, by somebody else. 


HE MEETS THE GIRL 


111 


“ That young woman,” he mused, “ would never 
give out anything but what young Frankie Joy 
would call a Beany Snub. Good skin, bad manner. 
Horrid bad manner she had. . . . Anyhow, it’ll be a 
change to have dinner in a house for once.” 

But as, at a quarter to eight, he approached the 
entrance to Elios, he found he wasn’t to have dinner 
in a house after all. 

He caught sight of the gleaming dinner table, 
with lamps already rosily alight, set out on the wide 
veranda of which he got glimpses between the 
rhododendron-bushes of the ascending drive. It 
struck Archie as a beast of a drive. It was steep, 
it turned at a nasty angle, you couldn’t get a fair 
run at it anywhere; he wondered how many cars 
had stuck on it half-way to the top. 

But at the top it ended in a broad level sweep, 
bordered on one hand by an ocean of lawn and 
on the other by a giant oak guarding the long- 
gabled house, white as a chalk cliff in the gloomy 
dusk. 

Archie Laverock, stopping to make sure which of 
many windows might be the entrance to this place, 
was greeted by the small but unmistakable sound 
of breaking glass. 

At the same moment a voice, old and weak, yet 
somehow boyish, cried from a far corner of the 
veranda,. “ There goes the last one ! ” 

A moment later a maid passed, carrying a basket 
that held a number of empty medicine-bottles ; see- 
ing Archie she paused ; turned. 

Mr. Rice-Mathews came forward out of the 
shadows. 


112 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


He was the frailest looking old gentleman imag- 
inable; so small and slender that he seemed bent 
over by the mere weight of seals at his waists 
Hair fine as thistledown covered his head, and all 
the bone of his face showed through his delicately 
wrinkled skin. In that feeble but indomitable 
voice he greeted his guest. 

“Ah, Mr. Laverock, isn’t it? How do you do, 
how do you do? I am very glad to see you. I 
think my granddaughter ” — her slim shape ap- 
peared behind his shoulder — “ explained to you 
w T hy we must have seemed so very rude? . . . But 
you had a good run down from London? . . . And 
did you find your way without difficulty to this 
house? . . . Will you sit — Ah, dinner is in? Will 
you come here? ” 

They sat down at the oval table set on the wide 
flag-stones between the French wundows of the 
house and the outer, deepening gloom of the 
grounds. The light of the rosily shaded oil lamps 
fell upon glimpses of turf silvered with wet, upon 
those gleaming strings of rain that hung between 
the gazer and the landscape like a bead curtain, 
and upon the great arms of the oak — sleeved with 
moss, fringed with polypodium fern that quivered 
under the still falling downpour. Always the word 
“Wales” would bring back to the Rover the smell 
of the wet moss, the sound of rain on foliage, the 
sight of ferns climbing high up on trees. . . . 

“ No rain drives me indoors any more,” boasted 
Archie’s host presently. “ For the last thirty 
years I have been kept in cotton-wool, Mr. Lave- 
rock. In cotton-wool. No fresh air if they could 


HE MEETS THE GIRL 


113 

help it. No fresh cool wet. Hey? (I hardly know 
why I tell you all this at once.) ...” 

Archie Laverock, from his side of the table, 
uttered small sounds that conveyed sympathy, 
respect, interest. He was “ good at ” this sort of 
thing, as his firm had known when they sent him 
down with orders to keep the old gentleman pleased 
with him (and the firm). Besides, he was genuinely 
interested in this extraordinary little old man who 
smashed medicine bottles and yet looked as if a 
puff of night-breeze would carry him away; who 
preferred to eat his excellent saddle of Welsh mut- 
ton and his wonderful peas to the sound of rain 
pattering on leaves, splashing in pools on the gravel 
just behind his chair. 

The mutton, by the way, was exquisitely carved 
at table, by the granddaughter. 

“ No, Laverock ; even you have not been minis- 
tered unto by the Charming Sex as I have for the 
last thirty years,” pursued the old man. “ For just 
thirty years I have not been allowed to do anything. 
Not a thing. Kept as an invalid. Say a mummy. 

Of course the excuse w r as ” He put his hand — 

the skeletonized claw of a sea-bird! — to the left 
of the old-fashioned dress-wmistcoat with silver 
buttons, “ the excuse was that one would — er — 
snuff out — er — go West in ten seconds if one did. 

. . . Perhaps you’d prefer a w 7 hisky and soda? 
This is some of that old w T hisky, hey? ” he added 
to the parlour-maid. “ Good. I haven’t tasted 
whisky for thirty years either. I’ll join you in a 
peg.” He blinked eyes, mutinous as a child’s. 
ei Milk with barley-w r ater wrns my poison for thirty 


114 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


I 


years. Wonderful, the care my wife took of me. 
She was a good woman. So was Mary. A good, 
good woman.” 

Young Laverock remembered that “ Mary ” was 
the granddaughter who married into the motor- 
firm. Then he almost jumped in his chair. 

For, suddenly, Mr. Rice-Mathews brought both 
hands down on the arms of his own chair and raised 
his voice. In a tone that quivered with high and 
passionate resentment, the tone of indictment 
against a Fate, undeserved, the old man cried out : 

“•All my life I have been surrounded by these 
Good Women! ” 

Equally suddenly the voice dropped, adding 
with great gentlness, “ Not you, Mauve.” He 
turned to the girl, slim and silent, at his right 
hand. “ I didn’t mean you, my dear.” 

“ I know you didn’t, Grandfather,” the girl ac- 
cepted his tribute. 

Her voice was still as cool and detached as it 
had been on the caravan steps. The Rover noticed, 
however, that there was a gleam of understanding 
in her glance as it rested on the old man. Imme- 
diately her eyes left him, they became as hard as 
nails. Hard, altogether, her face. Now that the 
rain-flush had faded from it, it was colourless. 
Sallow. Plain, even. Brown hair, uninterestingly 
done. Dress — dark blue or dark brown, a “ good ” 
dress ! 

“ Fits her, but might have been thought out for 
any other girl,” was the view of Archie Laverock. 

His impression of the whole appearance of Miss 
Mauve Rice-Mathews, was that the girl was well- 
turned-out without caring to be anything beyond 


HE MEETS THE GIRL 


115 


this. Of that half-recognized aim to attract that 
shows all unconsciously through details of a frock, 
of a girl’s shoe-buckles, her hair slide, the polish of 
her nails, there was not an iota. This girl honestly 
did not care what anyone thought of her looks. 
Her mind was not there. She was thinking of 
something else the whole time. . . . 

Was she sulking over that apology that she had 
been sent to make? How like a girl . . . Some 
girls. But no, the Rover decided, not this girl. 

He wondered if, and why, she was so “ fed ” with 
life. At her age. . . . 

Her grandfather was talking . . . “ can’t run , 
of course. I was never allowed to learn to swim. 
No opportunities here to fly. So I want at least 
to learn to drive a car. A ’bus, you’d call it? Or 
is a ’bus always an aeroplane?” (never was any 
one so pitifully eager to be up to date even in 
slang). 

“ I shall want you to tell me those things. In 
fact, you will have a great deal to do with my edu- 
cation, Laverock. Look upon yourself as a sort of 
private tutor, and upon me as — as a backward 
boy.” 

So, pathetically, he plied Archie with questions 
about himself and his own kind. All these young 
men of nowadays. ... What did they do? Think 
about? Want? Was it true that here, in this 
Post-War generation, Archie’s generation, the gen- 
eration that tasted life as this old man yearned 
hopelessly to taste it now — was it true that here 
was a generation spoiled? 

“ I hope not, Sir ” 

“ Materialistic ! ‘ Completely mannerless,’ they 


116 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


say. I don’t think I’d agree,” said the old man, 
watching, across the flowers and a gulf of fifty 
years, this youth’s fine shoulders and tawny satin 
head. “ I was — er — somewhat pleased with what 
one of these modern young women says — 

‘But since we are children of this age , 

In curious ways discovering Salvation, 

I will not quit my muddled generation, 

But ever plead for Beauty in this rage! ’ 

“ Hey? Oh, yes. I — er — even read their 

verse. Do I not, Mauve? Keep up with it all. In 
the push. You’ll find Miss May Sinclair and the 
last number of Pan and Mrs. Hugh Walpole and 
Miss Ethel M. Dell and Doctor Marie Stopes on 
‘ Married Love ’ all in my room ; on the shelf where 
the medicine bottles used to be. Vastly clever, 
all they write. All the different kinds. To me, 
of course, there would appear to be a certain lack 
of style in some of their work. ( So different from 
Sir Thomas Browne, say — or, of another type, the 
Grammont Memoirs.) But that, it appears, is in- 
tentional? ... You do not read much, Laverock? 
Really? Your only hooks — perhaps? ha, ha . . . 
if it’s not impertinent? But perhaps this age 
does not even quote Moore? ...” 

So they talked, the old man who owned that 
Welsh country-house, the stately routine of which 
could be seen by a guest in glimpses as the topog- 
raphy of a town is seen from a flying train — and 
the young man whose every earthly belonging was 
packed up in somebody else’s caravan. As for the 
girl, she might have been one of the veranda-pillars 


HE MEETS THE GIRL 


117 


as she sat there; withheld eyes upon her peach. 
She was not shy. The few words she did utter 
w T ere entirely self-possessed. An admirable mana- 
ger, since she was the woman at the head of affairs 
at Rhos. Everything perfect; the table, the food, 
the flowers, the lights, the cut glass, the ancient 
crested silver, the training of the maids. A thor- 
oughly efficient young woman, without charm. 

“ A cigar, Laverock,” said the old man when his 
granddaughter rose and turned to the French win- 
dows of the drawing-room ; “ leave it open, Mauve ; 
you’ll play to us when you’ve finished your coffee, 
will you not? ” 

“ If you like. What would you like, Grand- 
father? ” 

“ Oh. Shall w T e let our guest choose, this eve- 
ning? What sort of music does Mr. Laverock care 
for? ” 

Before Archie could speak, the girl’s detached 
voice threw out, “ Do you like Revue tunes? A 
lot of new ones came down this morning.” 

“ Can’t you play any Beethoven?” suggested 
the Rover. He wondered if he had caught in her 
tone a flick of light contempt for any taste that 
young men possess — a hint that any piffling jingle 
is good enough for them. 

The old man took up, pleased, “ Ah ! We’re that 
in common, hey? Good. Play the Moonlight 
Sonata , Mauve. Obsolete, I feared. But since 
Laverock does not insist upon Bolshevik Opera, let 
us have the Moonlight Sonata ? ” 

The stately opening chords rose above the silkily 
rustling obligato of rain on leaves. She could play, 


118 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


that young woman inside there in the drawing- 
room. She could a make the piano talk/’ could 
make it cry aloud, complain, appeal, and sob. . . . 

Into that passionate Sonata of Beethoven’s, more 
than into any piece of music that the heart of 
man has yet conceived, each of us reads his own 
meaning and interpretation — 

To you or to me it may mean all the glamour 
of all the twilights that ever were, irradiated by 
the rising, slowly, slowly of the moon of the har- 
vest of your wishes — or mine. 

To this girl it meant — What? Young Laverock, 
listening, wondered. What her eyes and voice did 
not speak, flowed now from her fingers. It was 
a clear and willing stream struck from a sullen 
rock. . . . 

Could there have been a more vivid contrast than 
that between her curt, matter-of-fact “ I have come 
to apologize ” of this afternoon, and her enchanted 
playing of this evening? 

What was behind her music? What bridged the 
gulf between that and her seeming-personality? 

Was she not happy? Unhappy, then? Mis- 
erable? What? Archie Laverock was still won- 
dering when he said good-night. 

He wondered about it all the wet way back to 
his caravan. 


CHAPTER EIGHT 

BLUE ROCK — AND YELLOW-HAMMER 

“These birds” (pigeons) “have been taken as the emblem of 
Fidelity. . . . 

This bird ” ( the yellow-hammer ) “ is gregarious. ...” 

— Morris’s British Birds. 

N EXT morning, the morning that Mr. Rice- 
Mat hews was to take his first driving 
lesson, was radiant. So hopeless seem the 
tears of Wales, but what can match her smile? 

For Archie now made the acquaintance of a 
sunlit vivid fragrant country-side and a range of 
clear mountains over which cloud-shadows raced 
like a school of giant blue porpoises across an 
ocean of green billows. Huge diamond drops 
spangled the bushes of southernwood at every 
cottage-door beyond the common. With shrillest 
laughter the wayside pistyll flung its crystal jet; 
the full brooks chattered past the shaken fern; 
noiselessly the River slipped along well up to 
the arches of the old Stone Bridge. A fisherman 
stood to mid-thigh near the bank that Archie 
passed. And, ah, the scent of wet, warm honey- 
suckle from all the hedges on the way to Rhos! 

As for the driving, though, Archie found from 
the start that it was going to be hopeless. Never 
would Mr. Rice-Mathews make a driver. A car, 
to that gentle old enthusiast, was about as much 

119 


120 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


use as an apple to a fish. Young Laverock deter- 
mined that never without his knowledge should the 
car leave that bit of level sweep in front of the 
house, except when he himself took her down to 
the high road beyond the white lodge-gates. That 
drive, now, and the old man would be done for. 

Lunch, again set under the rose-framed veranda, 
interrupted the lesson. It would have been re- 
sumed in the afternoon, even though hands as well 
as an indomitable will are required for driving a 
car. Mr. Rice-Mathews’ frail old hands trembled 
with fatigue from working on the clutch. It was 
Miss Rice-Mathews, with her egg-basket over her 
arm, wlio gave the cue that her grandfather had 
had enough for one day. 

“ I wish you’d come and look at this sitting, 
Grandfather,” she said. “ It’s not what I ordered. 
Won’t you come, too, Mr. Laverock?” — well, she 
could hardly leave the young man standing 
there. . . . 

They followed her through garden doors and 
down paths to the back-premises, to the hen-houses 
and the run that seemed one flutter of plumage, 
one babel of shrill cries the instant the young mis- 
tress of Rhos appeared. . . . 

She said, “ Then, about those hives ” 

She kept bees, of course. Rabbits? oh, yes. The 
Rover, following and wondering, had a panoramic 
view of only some of the activities of this young 
woman. 

“ You must be always busy,” he murmured con- 
ventionally. 

The detached, matter-of-fact voice replied, “ Oh, 
I’m always busy , of course — Grandfather, it’s the 


BLUE LOCK— AND YELLOW-HAMMER 121 


Show on the 18th; come and see what you think 
of our chances with the begonias.” 

Followed a stroll at what Archie considered 
three-snail-power rate, down box-edged paths under 
sun-warmed walls tapestried with fans of plum 
and apricot. Above them showed those distant 
hills gemmed in squares, like streets of the New 
Jerusalem, with the shrill emeralds, the argent 
greys, the yellow chalcedony, the deepening purple 
amethysts of Wales. Tiny country; rich and con- 
centrated ; holding in one square mile of it a dozen 
samples of loveliness ; steep mountain, larch-fringed 
valley, farm-land, garden. . . . Outside this garden 
were ferny ways leading to arbours rose-wound and 
clematis-crowned; exquisite setting for Romance, 
exquisite, empty setting! 

For it seemed to Archie Laverock that certainly 
there was no Romance here. 

What filled this girl’s life? Hens, bees, begonias, 
rabbits, vegetable marrows? Care of house and 
garden; “being” Miss Rice-Mathews of Rhos? 
That was enough for her? But how could it be, 
for the girl who had played Beethoven like that 
last night? Which was the real Her? That was 
the riddle. 

After tea on the lawn Mr. Rice-Mathews would 
have turned to the car again. Archie, after a 
glance from the granddaughter, shook his head. 

“ Quite enough for the first day, Sir.” 

“ Oh,, you aren’t going to stop me ” 

“ Grandfather, you must. You’ll kill yourself.” 

“ Mr. Laverock will not let me do that, my dear. 
You need not — er— get the wind up. Very well. 
Till to-morrow, Laverock.” 


122 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


For a week this represented the daily pro- 
gramme ; and by the tenth day of motor-instruction 
and casual conversation and meals on the veranda 
and garden-pottering, it was no longer “ Laverock ” 
at every turn, but “ my boy ” and “ Archie.” 

The Rover himself had ceased to regret his camp, 
ceased to miss old Smith. The bull-terrier could 
wait. Archie Laverock, emerging from the inevi- 
table periodic reaction in which he took no interest 
in women, was beginning to be interested in this 
girl Mauve. 

She was a problem. She was not to be summed 
up, as he had at first summed her up, as a well- 
turned-out, plain-headed efficient stick of a girl. 
Anyhow, it is not safe to bank on any woman who 
looks like “ a pukka stick,” as the Arrant Rover 
knew. Some butterflies are specially gifted with 
the power of resembling sticks when it is not their 
moment for preening wings. Had she wings? If 
not, what made her able to play Beethoven like 
that? 

Constantly he puzzled over her. If she had the 
it “ in her ” to make such music, what did she live 
on? A girl like that has to live on something. She 
couldn't live on bantams, or begonias, or training 
servants. Could she just live on her piano? She 
couldn’t live on scenery. Nor on the society of any 
of the people she would meet in that neighbour- 
hood — from what the Rover had seen of them. 

One afternoon a car-load of callers drove up 
from a house about ten miles off. Mr. Rice- 
Mathews, from his armchair in the far corner of 
the veranda, glimpsed them at the bottom of the 
drive, and prepared to flee. Archie, who was en- 


BLUE ROCK— AND YELLOW-HAMMER 123 

joying a cigarette opposite him, gathered that they 
were old family friends. 

“ Duds,” murmured the old gentleman. “ I don’t 
know why you smile, Laverock. That is how they 
are to be described. I will have tea in my room, 
Mauve ” 

“ Grandfather, you know they wrote to give you 
the choice of Thursday or Friday ; and you said I 
might say Friday.” 

“ It seemed a long way off, then. Tell them I am 
not so well. I am not, when I see them. I came 

across a verse about them this morning in this ” 

He dragged a slim volume of vers libres from under 
his cushion. “ I must read it to you, Laverock — 
wait — ah, here ’tis. This — 

e Why should ive heed your miserable opinions , 
And your paltry fears f 
Why listen to your tales and narratives 
Long lanes of boredom along which you 
Amble amiably all the dull days 
Of your unnecessary lives?’” 

But even as he finished the line, these Philistines 
were upon him ; the car drew up before Rhos, and 
he was caught, forced to go out and greet the 
arrivals. 

These, to Archie’s first glance, were a collection 
of ladies of the same age, having all the same 
oblong faces, the same hats and expensive fussy 
boas. . . . Presently he discovered they were a 
mother, two aunts, and a daughter. 

The daughter was a girl of “ set figure ” un- 
troubled, complacent, not much older than Miss 


124 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


Rice-Mathews — last to leave tlie car was a washed- 
out man of about twenty-eight, already slightly 
bald, with pince-nez and a nervous laugh. . . . 
The sort of man, Archie considered, that no woman 
would ever look at. However, it appeared that he 
was engaged to be married to the daughter. She 
called him “ Bubbles ” ; apparently when he was 
a little boy he had been distinguished by a likeness 
to that dreadful picture. 

All these people obviously regarded Mr. Rice- 
Mathews as mildly mental. Conversation during 
tea consisted of their begging him to give up this 
wild idea of learning at his age to drive a motor- 
car until his granddaughter drew them off to talk 
to her about bees — which they did in voices that 
would have rendered any topic uninteresting. 

Archie, handing tea-cake with his customary 
charm of manner, wondered how the Rice-Mathews 
had survived more than one visit from these deadly 
people. . . . 

They turned, from this bee-talk, down an even 
longer lane of boredom. This was talk — much 
talk about “ Lionel in Persia.” Some nephew or 
cousin. The Rover thought that u Lionel ” was 
probably an admirable regimental officer. Pos- 
sibly quite a good chap if one knew him. But, oh ! 
his relatives and this monotonous record of his 
doings in that — istan and this — istan ! Enough to 
make anyone loathe the idea of ever meeting 
“ Lionel.” 

“ Will you cut a small piece of that cake,” Miss 
Rice-Mathews suggested to Archie — without inter- 
rupting the saga of Lionel. 

Young Laverock, cutting cake, could not help 


BLUE EOCK— AND YELLOW-HAMMER 125 


admiring her expression of composed interest. He 
knew she must be bored to coma by “ Lionel’s ” 
kin. Yet she, as the Americans say, “ got away 
with it.” 

Every human being in whom a young man takes 
especial interest teaches him something. Of 
Mauve Rice-Mathews the Rover would always 
retain the memory of a faultless manner under 
boredom. 

She behaved, it must be admitted, better than 
her grandfather. 

He all but fidgeted. 

After tea Mauve asked the two younger Duds if 
they had brought their tennis-racquets. 

They had. The washed out fiance suggested 
making a four; asked if Laverock played. 

“ Rather,” said Archie, glad of the break. 

Mr. Rice-Mathews, doomed to be abandoned on 
the veranda with the three elder ladies, cast 
glances of piercing reproach at his granddaughter 
as she passed him, leading the way to the tennis- 
lawn. 

It was not on the great ocean of turf before the 
house, but up a beech-shaded, hilly path to the 
upper grounds ; a good court, bordered on one side 
by a sloping bank, on the others by Tvoods. 

Miss Rice-Mathews and young Laverock played 
the visitors and beat them thoroughly. Their 
minds were not on the game, and the girl had let 
two balls go far above the net into the woods 
behind her. 

“ Must find those balls,” the man said, with his 
first sho^ of animation. “ One went right into the 
copper beech there — I marked it.” 


126 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


“ The other was much further down, Bubbles,” 
said the girl. “ Look — this way ” 

They disappeared, with a completeness, into the 
rustling leafage. 

The Rover turned to Miss Rice-Mathews. “ Do 
you thing we’ve time for a single? ” 

“ I think so.” 

“ Will you give me a game, then? ” 

“ Right.” She took the opposite side of the 
court, and Archie saw her, for the first time, fully, 
playing. . . . 

She, he discovered after the first volley, became 
changed, expressed, transfigured by movement ; she 
was that kind. Boyishly slim, more than boyishly 
graceful, the pale-clad shape of her flew to-and-fro 
upon that brilliant green court ; the gesture of her 
service combined strength with dainty finish, her 
defence was a picture. 

“ Oh, well played ! ” sang out the Rover admir- 
ingly, as, with the swoop of a swallow, she baffled 
his ball. Her eyes, usually so aloof, were brightly 
quick upon his attack as, in the growing interest 
of the game, she forgot all else. Under her fine 
but colourless skin there crept up the flush that 
had glowed, so lovely, that first day under the 
rain. 

All of a sudden he realized something that he 
had never seen before. 

“By Jove, she’s good-looking! ” 

For it was not only the flush of the game that 
transfigured her; it was another animation. He 
felt that, as she sprang here and there, he saw more 
of the real girl in one moment than he had seen 
of her in a week of hens and polite good-mornings. 


BLUE ROCK— AND YELLOW-HAMMER 127 


In fact, this was much more she as she ought always 
to be ; this was the Beethoven girl come to life. 

He had to work to win that game. 

Then they sat clown together on that sloping 
bank. 

“ No sign of those two,” said Archie lightly. 

“ Oh, they will be a long time finding that ball/* 
Mauve answered, laying down her tennis-racquet 
on the grassy bank beside her and speaking in a 
tone more girlish than he had heard from her 
before. “ They’ve been looking for it for eight 
years now.” 

“ Eight years f ” 

“ I mean of course that they’ve been engaged for 
that time.” 

The Rover gazed at her with those changeful 
eyes of his. “ For eight years?” he exclaimed. 
“ To each other f ” 

At the utter, the incredulous blankness of the 
young man's tone, Mauve broke out into frank 
laughter. “ Do you think it’s too long to think of 
the same person, Mr. Laverock?” 

“ I — well ! Could you do it? ” 

He asked her this, but this was not only what 
he wanted to know. He was even fuller than he 
had been of curiosities about this odd, inconsistent, 
baffling girl. But he was still far from learning 
what he only heard later on — the love-story of 
Mauve Rice-Mathews. 

Though he did not hear it then, we can forestall 
him. For this was it. 

In that wonderful Spring of 1914, the Spring 
that marked the last fling of leisured Love and 


128 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


Luxury for so many, the crest of the last wave 
of the old world’s tidal prosperity, when good silk 
stockings could be had for half-a-guinea a pair and 
when Punch still cost threepence ! Mauve as a slim 
eager debutante of eighteen had been brought out 
and given a season in town by one of these fairy- 
godmothers who took for their business the meta- 
morphosis of Cinderella. 

The Prince was played by a young man whose 
Christian name was Basil. He was in the Brigade, 
and he had been told off by the godmother (his 
aunt) to help to give the child as good a time as 
possible. She was an elfin creature whose country 
colour came and went piquantly enough under the 
smart hats his aunt was teaching her how to wear, 
and he shortly found it amusing to flirt with her. 

They became engaged ; Mauve with the whole of 
her newly awakened heart, the young guardsman 
perhaps a trifle dismayedly. Still! one has to 
marry sometime, and someone. She was attract- 
ive, as well as the kind of girl one does marry. 

She would have been ready to marry him the 
week war broke out. He told her that it would 
not be fair upon her. 

One delirious and poignant leave from the 
Front was hers; the next saw him married. 
Married to one of these sudden little “ girls from 
Nowhere” whom no one has seen or heard of 
before then. These things do happen, and without 
explanation. Quite a straightforward and adequate 
little note he wrote to beg his previous fiancee to 
forget if she did not forgive him. 

Mauve Rice-Mathews had never been able to do 
either. Not Time, not her own years of war-work 


BLUE ROCK— AND YELLOW-HAMMER 129 


on tlie Land, not the morning which showed Basil’s 
name in the Times’ list of those Killed in Action, 
not the appearance upon the scene of another man 
who had loved and wanted her — nothing had 
changed for Mauve the misery of her disap- 
pointment. 

The new man (who was from her own country)' 
had gone back to Persia, quietly announcing that 
he would wait. She’d told him how hopeless that 
would be. For her remained memories and futile 
self -catechism — “ Why couldn’t I keep Basil? 
What happened? What had she for him that took 
him away from me? Did he ever really care for 
me, or was it, was it all on my side? If he had 
married me at once, wouldn’t it have been all right? 
I shall never know, but what did happen?” 

The thing all but destroyed her. It blighted 
a thousand girlish gaieties and softnesses of her 
character even while her world considered that 
Mauve, such a sensible practical sort of girl, had 
got over that early affair so wonderfully, so unlike 
the way some girls would have taken it. . . . Per- 
haps only her grandfather guessed how it had 
really “ taken ” her. No words, only a sort of 
ironic tenderness, passed between them, but Mauve 
knew the old man knew and was sorry. 

What she did not know was that it was not now 
the defaulting lover whom she mourned. 

Long ago, really, had disappeared the actual 
memory of that young man. Faded from her mind 
were the lines of his face (that she still treasured 
in the snapshots of that season), muted the sound 
of his voice that had cried, “ Mauve, you sweet 
thing! you care ?” What remained now was a 


130 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


single, a destructive Obsession; no more love for 
the dead Basil than the ivy is itself the young oak 
about which it has wrapped itself and which, inch 
by inch, it chokes. She did not realize that were 
Basil now to appear, alive, before her, he would 
have no more in common with the idol of her own 
gloomy fancy than he would with — 

Say with this Mr. Laverock the motor-man, who 
“batch-ed,” as he called it, in a caravan, who 
played tennis quite decently, and was a help with 
visitors, and who (though there would not appear 
to be very much in him) did at least manage to 
provide a certain amount of amusement for Grand- 
father. Which was something. 

And now, a propos of people thinking for years 
of the same love, this young Mr. Laverock turned 
to her on the green bank and asked “ Could you? ” 

She said nothing for a moment. She looked 
away from him towards the depths of the woods 
into which those lost-ball seekers had disappeared. 

Then with a little nod of her dark head in that 
direction, she said, “ Those two people at least don’t 
seem to find any difficulty in it. They got engaged 
when she was eighteen and he was twenty, and 
they have always been devoted to each other, just 
like that.” 

“By Jove, what a lot they must see in each 
other,” murmured Archie Laverock, with a kind of 
wondering envy. True, he did not think he could 
ever “ see all that ” in any girl for so long — but 
also he thought that no girl he had ever met would 
have, for so long, adored himself. He said, “ There 


BLUE BOCK— AND YELLOW-HAMMER 131 

are some human beings still, then, of the Blue 
Rock type?” 

“ Why Blue Rock, Mr. Laverock? ” 

“ I mean Blue Rock pigeons, that select the one 
life-long mate and are never known to divide. 
Very different from some other birds. Yellow- 
hammers, for instance. ... If one could only 
think,” said Archie soberly, “ that there was just 
the. one other person out of the whole wide world ! ” 

She looked at him, interested now. “ Have you,” 
she asked, “ never thought that?” 

Had he? Had he not! Too often, already, this 
young man had imagined that he had found the 
one girl out of all the world for him ; had thought 
that she was embodied in this, that, or the other 
girl who had sat beside him closer than Miss Rice- 
Mathews at this moment. Too often he had 
banked on what he felt; had been sure that this 
particular girl (meaning Lucy Joy and all those 
predecessors of hers) was “different.” Too often 
he had seen it turn to be all a mistake again ! and 
perfectly genuine had been his disappointment, 
deep (though brief) his regrets. So now he sat 
silent, watching the flight of a velvet-bodied bee 
through the late afternoon sunshine to a spray of 
honeysuckle beckoning out of a tangle of shrubs. 
Its hum shut down into wooing silence as it held 
to the flower-fingers, then broke out again as the 
bee spun upwards, sped on — whither? To the 
spiced bergamot of the lower garden, it may be; or 
to the languorously -pale, voluptuously perfumed 
Mrs. Sinkins of the border, or to the pillar-roses. 
Restlessly questing, seeking ever for the sweeter 


132 THE ARRANT ROYER 

honey yet, they cannot stay, these arrant 
rovers. . . . 

Mauve, in her matter-of-fact tone that did now 
include a certain friendliness towards this young 
man on the grass beside her, began again, “ I 
should think the Blue Rock type, as you call it, is 
the type to be. That is, of course, if you are lucky 
enough to have found the other Blue Rock,” 

“ Oh, yes ; the world was made for them,” the 
Rover agreed, a little wistfully, a little bitterly. 
He was in the mood when he wondered whether 
the world was all wrong, or whether it was all his 
fault that he was like this, or what. * Everything 
is arranged to suit the constant lover. Society is 
based on the idea that everybody is exactly like 
those friends of yours.” 

Well ! They,” again she nodded towards the 
wood, “ are quite the most contented people I know. 
Everything to each other. She told me that she had 
never thought of anybody but Christopher, and 
that Christopher had never looked at another 
woman in his life ! ” 

At this, in spite of what he’d said, in spite of 
what he'd felt, in spite of all he’d experienced, 
that Arrant Rover at the inmost heart of Archie 
Laverock whispered a fervent, “ Poor devil ! ” 

But aloud he only said, “ Oh, that’s his real 
name, is it? ” 

Then, weary of the subject of these incompre- 
hensible people who had been “ devoted ” ( what- 
ever that might mean) to each other for eight years, 
Archie turned from them. A rebellious thought 
within him reactionarily muttered that the Blue 
Rock types paid for their interest for each other 


BLUE BOCK— AND YELLOW-HAMMER 133 

by being their petrifying boresomeness for every- 
body else around them ; that they’d no antennae of 
humours, no “ Tendrils ” of sympathy to catch at 
what happened outside their enclosed and narrow 
corhplaceney ; that a Blue-Rock man meant per- 
haps a man unenterprising, obtuse, insensitive — a 
Blue-Rock girl one who has had few opportunities 
to be otherwise; a girl without temperament or 
altruism. Enough of them. 

He was again conscious of the new attractiveness 
of this girl near him; her neat hair unstirred by 
the breezes, her cheeks still lovely with their car- 
nation flush. Further, he became conscious of a 
quite urgent wish to call her by her Christian 
name. 

So, on another note, he added, “ By the way, 
yours is rather an uncommon name, isn’t it? 
How ” — more softly — “ How is it spelt? ” 

Chill seemed to fall upon the warming friendly 
current between them. Quite distinctly and with a 
full-stop as it were between each letter, Miss Rice- 
Mathews spelt it out for him “ M-A-U-V-E.” 

“ Oh, yes. Like the colour. I see,” said young 
Mr. Laverock, in that pleasant subdued voice of his. 

One lesson he had learnt (from another fair 
teacher) just after he left his public school had 

p een Take ‘ no ’ for an answer now and then . 

Women are supposed to adore men ivho won’t. 
Such a mistake. We’re only too pleased with the 
ones who sometimes do. W hen you are practically 
sure of being given , gladly , what you ask for, then 
is the time to insist! Until then, the golden rule is 
‘ N ever pester ! ’” 

So now, in this matter of Miss Rice-Mathews, 


134 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


he took a hint and pressed no further the question 
of Christian names. 

Little did he imagine how soon his own Chris- 
tian name was to come, unasked, from the girl 
herself ! 


CHAPTER NINE 


THE GAME OF DARE » 

“ But if a game isn’t dangerous, where is the fun ? ” 

— Small Boy’s Remark . 

I T came about in this way. 

A couple of days later there dawned a day 
when Mr. Rice-Mathews very nearly carried 
out his granddaughter’s prophecy that he would 
kill himself. The first step the old gentleman took 
towards this was to tell Archie Laverock, the night 
before, that he should not want him the next 
morning; he would miss a lesson. 

Archie thought it a good idea; he did not want 
this very difficult pupil of his to get stale. So the 
young Instructor spent his morning in affairs of 
his own ; he wrote a couple of over-due letters, then 
hired a horse from a nearby farm, harnessed him to 
“ The Navarac ” and moved house — from the Com- 
mon, which was becoming altogether too populous 
with County-school children eager to inspect the 
wonder-caravan, to a field half a mile nearer to 
Rhos and belonging to that estate. This would 
give him privacy and also was more convenient; 
it was an understood thing now that he dined each 
evening with the Rice-Mathews, even as it was that 
he got in some tennis every day. 

On the afternoon of this particular day — that 
he was destined not to forget, even though he had 
looked into the bright face of danger himself often 
enough already — he came, a few yards away from 

135 


136 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


the Lodge-gates of Rhos, upon an uncommon picture. 

Turning from a side-path into the drive he saw 
a tall girl in a uniform, a little time ago familiar 
enough! composed of the broad felt hat, the light 
belted smock, the riding-breeches, the leggings, the 
boots of the Land Army. Across her shoulders she 
bore an antiquated yoke of wood, half-perished and 
scrubbed white, to each end of which had been 
fastened a length of yoke. Slung from one end 
was a zinc bucket, from the other a wicker-basket. 
Each of these carried two or three large stones. The 
Land-Girl stopped, allowing bucket and basket to 
rest on the ground ; she turned, to let the yoke easy 
on her shoulders. 

As she did so, young Laverock saw her face. 
Only then did he realize that it was Miss Rice- 
Mat hews in another garb. 

He hurried quickly forward. “ I say ! What on 
earth are you doing? ” 

She laughed. “ Don’t you think this is rather a 
good idea, Mr. Laverock? ” 

He glanced at her kit; the attire that, of all 
others, was. the most becoming ever invented for 
the slender, ong-limbed, sloping-shouldered, out-of- 
door girl of these Islands. “ Capital,” he said. 

“ Oh, but I meant the old yoke. I found it in 
one of the cow-houses at the farm and rigged this 
thing up. You see, all the men were busy getting 
down that tree to-day, and it would have taken 
me all day to carry them up one at a time.” 

“These stones? But what do you want them 
for? ” 

“ My rock garden, of course,” she explained. 
“ I’ve been turning one bank of it round from east 


THE GAME OF DARE 


137 


to west because some of the plants weren’t doing 
very well. They didn’t like that aspect. And I 
found I hadn’t got quite enough big stones, so I 
came down here to forage.” 

“Well, you’ll let me give you a hand with them 
now. . . . By Jove, they must weigh seventy 

pounds,” he exclaimed as he shifted yoke and bur- 
den on to his own shoulders. “ You weren’t going 
to cart this all the way up the hill by yourself, 
were you? ” 

She laughed again. “ I did nearly four years 
on the Land, you know, after all . . . they were 
a bit heavy, but it’s the balance that you have to 
get right. . . .You may take your turn, but I’ll 
have another presently ” 

So, slowly, and changing at intervals, the two 
made their way up the hill. Archie realized that 
she would have hated him not to let her take her 
turn. Also that sharing a burden thus, without 
chance of much conversation, was carrying them 
further towards intimacy than a whole afternoon 
full of small talk. 

The two young people had just mounted the 
steepest part of the drive when, at a familiar sound 
that broke out upon the summer air, Archie Lave- 
rock’s blood suddenly ran chill. 

For there was one thing about his car which old 
Mr. Rice-Mathews really could manage. This was 
the horn. He took a small boy’s delight in warning 
anybody within fifty yards of the danger that was 
upon them. It was the horn that his young in- 
structor and his granddaughter now heard — 
“ Honk, honk, honk, honk,” and with each “ honk ” 
drawing nearer to them. 


138 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


. . . He'd got into the car, then. By himself. 
He thought he could manage her. Down this 
hill! . . . 

Archie’s first aghast thought -was to clear the 
drive. Miss Rice-Mathews was taking her turn 
with the load of stones; she was perhaps four feet 
in front of him — and what she thought of feeling 
suddenly seized, yoke and all, and flung violently 
into the middle of a White Knight rhododendron- 
hush, Archie did not stop to consider. She never 
opened her lips nor gasped, such worlds was she 
removed from the type of young woman who will 
cry out in pain or emergency — but that Archie only 
thought of much later on. In his heart at that 
moment were the disrespectful words, “ Doddering 
old idiot ! I can’t turn my back for a second. ...” 

All he actually exclaimed to his companion was : 
“All right! stay where you are . . .” (in the 
middle of the bush) “give us room and I can 
manage . . .” before dashing round the bend 
towards that cheery hooting. 

Mr. Rice-Mathews sat at the wheel, beaming with 
delight. He, who had not been allowed to venture 
one yard off the level in front of the House, was 
touchingly pleased by his increasing speed. Not 
the slightest idea had he that this speed was that 
of the boat drifting ever nearer to the Rapids — the 
rapids of that “beast of a drive.” Catastrophe 
waited in the form of the abrupt turn, the descent, 
the closed gate, the stone wall beyond the gate. 

“ All right ! I’m coming. One tick ! ” the old 
voice called out blithely. “ I’m coming for those 
stones, my dear . . . Mauve! Vm coming! what 
is the use of having learnt to drive if I can't ” 


THE GAME OF DARE 'lgg 

He was so happily intent upon his game; the 
favourite game of all of us, the game of Dare! The 
Child plays it with matches on the nursery hearth, 
the Man with engines above the clouds, the Woman 
with those even more dangerous toys — the emotions 
of herself and others. In this, at any rate, the 
delicate old invalid was young at heart as any 
babe. So, at that ghastly juncture, he just beamed 
out of the car that was driving him; driving him 
w T itli every turn of the wheel towards destruction. 

“ Good God ” broke from Laverock, as he 

rushed forward knowing that this charming old 
ignoramus would, as likely as not, jam the accel- 
erator on instead of the brake. 

What happened next — how it happened he 
scarcely knew. . . . What Mauve saw, as, leaving 
her stones, she picked herself out of the branches 
and peered, anguished, round the bend, was a pic- 
ture that she will not forget. The drive, the tensely- 
poised flannelled figure that judged the speed of 
that on-coming car, and that took a tiger-swift leap 
as if to cast itself into its very track, and was 
then caught up upon the foot-board as a conjuror’s 
ball is caught up in the cup — and was past her — 

The rest she did not see, but heard. Sudden 
slam of a lever, grinding of the brakes, diminuendo 
of the rush, and the pull up of the car on the very 
brink of that perilous slope. . . . 

Then, danger over, she clutched at a strong 
bough beside her, and sank back for a moment 
among the leaves, the yoke, the stones for the rock 
garden. . . . 

“ You shouldn’t have tried to carry those stones 
all that way, my dear,” her grandfather reproved 


140 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


her, coming placidly up to her a few moments 
later. “ I was coming. I was coming. Archie 
didn’t know that when he stopped me. I was in- 
tending to take you by surprise. I should have 
been down here in a moment. Now, I’ll drive you 
two home.” 

He then called back over his shoulder. “ I am 
afraid you will not be able to turn the car there, 
my boy. Better back her, hadn’t you?” 

There was no reply from Archie Laverock. 

Miss Rice-Mathews was grateful to him for pre- 
tending to be still busy with the car at the gate. 
She knew what kept the young man: he was 
heaping black objurgations upon her grandfather’s 
innocent and lint-white head, and he was having 
the consideration to keep out of the way until he 
(young Laverock) had let off steam and felt a little 
better. When, after a couple of minutes, he tooled 
slowly up to them he had evidently got it over. 

Mr. Rice-Mathews turned to him exultantly, 
“ Aren’t you — er — rather bucked with your pupil, 
young man? ” 

“ Quite a pretty turn of speed you got up, Sir,” 
Archie said grimly. “ But if you don’t mind, it’s 
just a little ahead of the programme. Stupid of 
me. My fault. I ought to have given you this 
downhill lesson a bit sooner. Please don’t try to 
drive again before I have.” 

He bent, piling the stones into the front of the 
car. Miss Rice-Mathews came to help. Perfectly 
composed now, she said to him, a Thank you, 
Archie.” She added with the same composure. 
u It is pronounced 6 Mauve ’? Like the colour.” 


CHAPTER TEN 


CALLING 

“ Mv heart was so free 
It roved like a bee 
Till Polly my passion requited. 

I sipped each flower, 

I changed every hour, 

But here every flower is united! ” 


— Beggar's Opera. 

“ So we’ll go no more a-roving. . . . ” 

— Byron. 


HE Royer knew no more about the science 



of gardening than does the errant bee; he 


just liked flowers “ to be there.” He knew 
nothing about rock-gardens either; except that he 
liked to be there himself, at least as long as the 
job lasted of one boulder to be shifted from this 
border to that, and of a load of soil to be tipped 
into certain crevices in the way that Mauve Rice- 
Mathews pointed out to him. 

He now wanted to be with her; at her beck and 
call. But was that all? A couple of days back, 
what he had wanted was to call her by her Chris- 
tian name. Now he had that privilege he found he 
didn’t care about it. Meaningless enough it was. 
Even that Blue-Rock man of the other day, called 
her Mauve. As for her calling him Archie — well, 
nobody seemed to be ‘ Mister ’ any more nowadays 
except the plumber, or the man from the black- 
smith’s forge who had knocked up her pigeon-cote 


141 


142 


THE ARRANT ROVER 

for her. Young Laverock began to feel that being 
“ Archie ” to her was not enough — all this as he 
moved at her direction among the debris of the bank 
that she was moving. He was in shirt sleeves, with 
arms all earthy to the elbow ; she wore that Land- 
girl rig that suited her so well, with one riding- 
breeched knee upon the path as she dug up an ob- 
stinate root here, or patted the soil down 
about a plant there. With every movement that 
she made there grew upon him the curious still 
attraction of the girl; her charms of changeful 
colour, of lithe height, of breeding. Depth, too, 
she had ; she “ thought ” about things. So different 
from (for instance) a chattering glittering crea- 
ture like the Beauty-Girl. (Poor Little Lucy! just 
a pretty little face . . . ) That was it, thought 
the Rover, again oblivious that this w 7 as not the 
first time that he had thus summed up a young 
woman. Mauve was different. 

He didn’t know how else to express it. He could 
not have said, exactly, of what it was that her “ dif- 
ference ” chiefly consisted. He was eager to know. 

What did she think about? not only about him, 
but everything? What had her life been — not only 
before he, Archie, came to Rhos, but before she had 
made herself into the admirable young chatelaine 
and sick-nurse that she was? Before that? before 
she had first donned those toil-worn breeches and 
that smock she now wore and had toiled as a genu- 
ine Land-girl? And before the war? Had there been, 
no other than country and domestic interests in 
her life? The Rover thought there was something 
very wonderful if there hadn’t been. . . . 

He went back again for a moment to the thought 


CALLING 


143 


of the last girl who had so occupied his mind.* 
Lucy Joy. . . . Part of Lucy’s attraction had been 
that she had such hosts of admirers. . . . 

Now Mauve apparently had no admirers at all. 
Didn’t think of such a thing. That was Mauve’s 
attraction. 

Suddenly he looked straight down at her, as she 
knelt and he stood. He said straight out “ Mauve? ” 

She was scraping with a bit of slate the soil 
from her slender hands. “ Yes,” she said, “ what? ” 

He didn’t know what he wanted to say. He 
wanted somehow to be nearer her; not literally, 
but with the nearness of hearts that understand 
each other. The first thing that came into his 
head he uttered. “ Why wouldn’t you let me call 
you ‘ Mauve’ before now?” 

“ Why should I?” 

“ Well then, why — that time on the drive did you 
suddenly say I might? ” 

Mauve dug the bit of slate down into the soil 
beside her. Then she rose, straightened herself, 
and looked at him for a moment before she an-* 
swered slowly but candidly. “ Archie, I really 
don’t know.” 

And she did not. She was conscious of feeling 
a certain bewilderment, these days, about this 
young man whose coming she had at first resented, 
and who had so quickly made himself into one of 
the family that had before consisted of two only; 
the old, old man who so yearned for youth, and the 
young woman who had often felt, somehow she was 
now beginning to cease to feel, she was older at 
heart than her own grandfather. She was begin-* 
ning to feel this greatly at the bottom of her heart, 


144 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


that had felt like a leaden weight, seemed lifting, 
lifting. . . . And — here was something that young 
Laverock did not know and would have given a 
great deal to have known about — last night after 
she had gone up to her bedroom she had done an 
odd thing. She had unlocked a drawer of her little 
writing-table, of which the key was always attached 
to her bracelet, and she had taken out a small 
packet ‘of old snapshots of Basil. . . . For the 
first time for years she had glanced over them 
without the feeling of an icy hand being placed 
upon her heart that bore that weight. She had 
said to herself with a serenity that surprised even 
herself a second later, “ He was very handsome, 
poor boyi . . . These were taken w T hen he was 
younger than I am now. . . . ” 

Then she had said, u There’s no point in keeping 
all these; it’s absurd.” And she had put aside one 
snapshot, the one taken in polo-kit the very last 
time she had gone to see him play at Ranelagh in 
June before the war. That she had put back. The 
rest she had burnt in her bedroom grate, watching 
the light flame, fanned by the night-breeze through 
her window, die down into soft rustling black ash. 
A man can be enshrined in one photograph as well 
as in fifty. She had gone to bed thinking, “ Well, 
I kept the best one. ...” That had been last night. 
This afternoon she was taking more zest in the re- 
arrangement of her rock-garden than she had taken 
in anything for a long, long time. 

He was as much a puzzle to himself in these days, 
as she. Lucy Joy’s “ Auntie” had spoken truly 
when she said that “ Those” (of whom Archie 


CALLING 


145 


Laverock was “One”) were not always very 
happy. . . . Points there are in having the tem- 
perament of that bee who can rove from flower to 
flower (murmuring flatteries into the heart of that 
mignonette, this snapdragon, sampling and com- 
paring sweets), and can then be off with never a 
tie to bind him. But there is another side to that 
picture. Archie had moments of realizing only that 
other side. Moments when he felt rootless, de- 
tached . „ . lonely. . . . He actually longed, at 
these moments, for something that would tie him 
and would anchor him. Something that would 
keep him. In his boyish language he would have 
put it, “ Why can’t I settle down and stick to some- 
thing? Is it because I’m too darned selfish? Or 
is something radically wrong with me? Or is it 
just because I haven’t met the right person? If I 
only could! Even if she didn’t care for me. . . . 
Even if she wouldn’t have anything to say to me, 
it would be better than this kind of thing ! Yes, if 
I could only meet somebody who turned out to be 
The One ” 

At this moment he was truly beginning to think, 
to hope, to believe that The One might turn out 
to be Mauve Rice-Mathews. He turned to her 
again, and the questions in his eyes and heart were, 
“Look here; can’t you help me, somehow? can’t 
you do something for me? You do seem different; 
are you? 'What are you? ” 

Questions which one can’t very well put to a girl 
with whom, though one may call by her Christian 
name, there is not yet any question of really inti- 
mate friendship. 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


146 

So he changed these questions into something 
else, hoping that her answers might at least tell 
him something about her. 

“ I say, why do you live here? ” 

She looked at him with a smile of surprise. 

“ Why shouldn’t I? My roots are here. I can’t 
imagine myself living anywhere but at Rhos, now.” 

“ Can’t you? ” 

u Not now,” she repeated, and glanced from the 
flower-beds at her feet towards the pergola of 
Dorothy Perkins roses that marked the path 
towards the River at the foot of that garden. 
Beyond, the misty mountains looked twice their 
height, presaging continued fine weather. “ I can’t 
imagine a lovelier place in which to finish one’s 
life ” 

To finish it? thought the Rover with a little 
laugh to himself. Why, the girl hadn’t begun her 
life! 

“• 1 should get ‘ Hiraeth ’ homesick after a 

fortnight away from this,” she said, looking fondly 
about her. “ Welsh people are like that — about 
places.” She added briskly. “ Besides, I have got 
everything here into the way I like having it. I 
like managing, you know. Which is a good thing, 
as it happens. Somebody had to look after Grand- 
father when Mary got married. As long as he 
doesn’t go and try to commit suicide, as he did on 
Thursday! . . . But I believe you’re a Cockney 
at heart, Archie; the country bores you, doesn’t 
it?” 

“ Not a bit,” he assured her, a trifle sharply. He 
was stung, not because she accused him of being 
a Cockney, but because even her friendliness some- 


CALLING 


3.47 

how seemed to keep him off. She would not tell 
him anything that he really wanted to know. She 
kept him at arm’s-length. He went on, “ I could 
do with the country forever ” 

" Oh! ” 

“ Yes, if it meant the veldt on the prairie 

or the bush on the big Outdoors generally. I 
loathe it when it’s — ” he stamped some gravel down 
into place with his heel, “ when it’s just a glori- 
fied allotment-garden peopled by — by Parish 
cats ” 

She laughed aloud, teased him, pretended to 
think he meant herself, all with that sisterly but 
distant friendliness that would never bring her 
nearer. . . . 

“ But, Mauve ! ” he exclaimed presently, exasper- 
ated. " Tell me! ” 

“ Tell you what? ” She sat down for a breathing 
space on a bit of board set below her little sun- 
dial. “ Give me a cigarette,” she said, “ — thank 
you — what was it you were going to say? ” 

But how after all could he say it, when there 
are really no words for these signals from one heart 
to another? 

Clumsily enough he paraphrased the signal into 
speech. “ I was going to ask you about yourself,” 
he said, burying head downwards the match with 
which he had given her a light. “ Don’t you some- 
times long to get away from it all, really? Life 
is so short. Anyhow, young life. And when one 
is young, that’s the time one is really seeing 
things,” the Kover declared. “ By the time you’re 
forty — fifty — Why, you’re only able to see what 
you’ve been taught to look for!” 


148 THE ARRANT ROYER 

“ What a depressing thought, Archie,” she 
laughed. 

He frowned. 

“You won’t take me seriously, of course,” he 
said restlessly. “ It’s the easiest way to shelve a 
question, making fun of it ! But don’t you, hon- 
estly, sometimes long to cut away? Even from this 
lovely place? To see fresh countries — continents? 
There’s all America. Western Canada — I’d love 
to fish there ! There’s Australia. There’s the won- 
derful, wonderful East, Mauve ” 

Alas, the countries of which the Rover’s heart 
was fain are not to be found on any map! No 
liners book passages to those Fortunate Islands. 
But this he did not realize. He thought that he 
was yearning for Japan, for China. Places he’d 
never have the money or the chance to get to. He 
probably would always have to “ stay put ” on 
this collection of sea -bound rocks of Western 
Europe, called the British Isles. This girl would 
stay put also; but, then, Archie would always 
“mind.” Always he would be dissatisfied, he 
thought, because he could never manage to go out 
to Cashmir, which old Smith had said was so 
topping. . . . Ah, the things one missed! Christ- 
mas Camp in India, now. . . . How heavenly that 
must be, with a girl who was everything to one, 
of course. . . . 

But Mauve Rice-Math ews quoted: 

“We change our skies above us, 

But not our hearts that roam ?” 

He looked quickly at her, sitting there quietly, 
with her cigarette. She had a very pretty hand, 


CALLING 149 

he had noticed already, and he knew that this was 
the reason that many girls did smoke; but he was 
not. thinking of that now— he had ceased to take 
notice primarily of this girl’s looks. He was stirred 
by her voice — it was a voice that seemed different 
which had quoted the line. . . . 

A lovely voice. . . . Even as it spoke, interrup- 
tion came into that sunny garden where the smell 
of freshly-dug' earth mingled with the smell of 
roses. Through the pergola and up to the sundial 
there stepped demurely the black-and-white figure 
of Megan, the Welsh parlour-maid, who cast an ob- 
lique glance of melting tenderness towards Mr. 
Laverock (quite unconscious that he was adored 
in secret by the whole of the female staff at Rhos) 
and who bore in her hands a square, solid-looking 
packet that she handed to her young mistress. 

It was a parcel that arrived by the second post, 
called from the town post-office by the lodge- 
keeper’s children — and there had been three and 
sixpence excess postage to pay on it. 

To save Miss Rice-Mathews from running up to 
the house, Archie brought the silver out of his 
jacket-pocket, even while Mauve, tossing away her 
cigarette end, exclaimed, “ Three-and-six? but 
why? — Oh, it’s from Persia, is it ” 

“ Yes, Miss,” murmured the little maid — her in- 
ward interest all for the visitor, her inward com- 
ment being, “ There’s handsome he is ! There’s 
kind he is! There’s always the same he is, to 
everybody,” in rain-soft Welsh words. She slipped 
away, back to the house, out of the presence of 
Archie Laverock, who had scarcely noticed her 
little face, all the time she had waited upon him 


150 THE ARRANT ROVER 

at Rhos! but who, to her dying day, would remain 
the criterion of Charm for one brown-eyed Welsh, 
maid. . . . 

The young mistress of the house, examining the 
box sewn up in wax-cloth wrapping, said half to 
herself, “ I’d forgotten that it must be so near my; 
birthday. ...” 

Upon which Archie found himself involuntarily 
pricking up his ears. Birthday-presents, from 
Persia? 

He said, lightly, “Many happy returns of the 
day, then.” 

“ It isn’t really the day until to-morrow,” Mauve 
answered, breaking the stitches in the wax-cloth* 

She then blushed deeply. 

Now this was not altogether on account of the 
faithfulness of that man in Persia, who still, it 
appeared, would not give up hope, who w T rote un« 
failingly at Christmas, and who remembered, 
equally without fail, that date in June. Mauve 
blushed, partly because she had that sort of skin. 
Also partly because she felt, during these last 
golden days, curiously elated, disturbed, ready to 
laugh easily, and unlike her usual self. She 
blushed partly, too, because of something in the 
eyes now fastened upon her of the Arrant Rover. 

He said, “ Do you want that lid pried open? ” 
and brought out one of those knives over which 
women wonder how men can stow them about their 
person; a case of instruments, a box of tools in a 
sheath. 

“ Oh thanks,” said Mauve, and gave over the box 
to him. He got the wooden lid raised and handed 


CALLING 


151 


back tlie box. It was stuffed with packing of a 
sort well known to recipients of parcels from the 
Eastern bazaars, dirty screws of newspaper and 
of more newspaper . . . came finally the precious 
contents; something swathed and wound about in 
rolls of foreign-smelling muslin. 

Mauve unwound the stuff. There appeared shin- 
ing, slender, some alien silver object; half -vase, 
half-censer. 

“ Ah yes ! I know what it is,” she exclaimed, 
holding it up in the sunshine. “ I was promised 
one of these. He says it’s called a Gulabi Pash. 
A sprinkler for rose-water. How pretty ! ” 

She stood looking at it between her hands, the 
rose-water sprinkler from that distant land, sending 
out gleams of silvery fire under the sunshine among 
roses of Wales. She looked — then, as if she w r ere 
drawn away by the gaze which Archie kept upon 
her, she turned to him. 


Their eyes met, in one of those strange, those 
“ calling,” those unheralded looks that are noth- 
ing — yet everything. She stood, holding that silver 
gift; Archie faced her, holding out something to 
her. A card. 

“ This — dropped out of the packing,” he told her, 
with his changeful eyes deep in her dark ones. 
“ Pm afraid I couldn’t help seeing what was on it. 
It was lying ^ace upwards.” 

Then, at last, she took it, and left his gaze, and 
read. She said, “ Oh ! It doesn’t matter in the 

least ” carelessly enough, but with a changed 

face, a further deepening of that blush. He looked 
away from it, but he had seen her change of ex- 


152 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


pression; conscious, proud, amused, annoyed! as 
clearly as he had seen those words, plainly written 
across a man’s visiting-card. 

“ As always, Lionel.” 

Ah. At last ! 

Three words had broken the barrier of that girl’s 
mystery. Or so Archie Laverock thought. He 
thought he saw it all now. 

A present, sent evidently, on every birthday of 
hers. (A birthday-date is not remembered save by 
those who care or who have cared pretty consid- 
erably for the person whose birthday it is.) A 
present from Persia. “ Lionel ” — of course, the fel- 
low about whom there’d been all that talk the other 
day at tea. Those people who came ( with the Blue 
Rocks) had said that “ Lionel had got leave, and 
was even now on his way home for the first time 
since ’15. Then Mauve’s conscious face. 

These things added up to — a revelation. 

Here was this baffling, withheld girl who (Archie 
was growing to hope) might mean The One out of 
the world for him ; a girl without any man in her 
life, as far as he had so far seen. . . . Now he re- 
alized that there was another man who cared. This 
fellow Lionel, whether she cared for him or not, 
meant to have her. 

It should have been a blow to Archie Laverock. 
Curiously enough, it was a stimulation only. He 
had a rival, had he? . . . Right. . . . That cer- 
tainly need not mean that he, Archie, was “ out.” 
On the other hand, it meant that this revelation 
had made her what she had not seemed before ; ap- 
proachable. At all events he knew now. Archie 


CALLING 


153 

liad seen, and Mauve had seen that he saw. That 
counted. 

She, meanwhile, was a jazz of feelings. Oddly 
elated she felt that young Laverock should realize 
that there was a Lionel in her life; oddly exas- 
perated, oddly eager to explain exactly how much 
and how little this Lionel meant to her. All the 
time too, she was excited and “ alive ” as she had 
not known herself for the past five years. Again 
she looked at Archie Laverock. . . . 

Then, into that silence of the garden, there broke 
a sound from the direction of the house. That of a 
gong, struck crescendo. 

“ Tea ! ” Mauve exclaimed, almost as if, from out- 
side, help had been sent to a difficult situation. 
She glanced up at the sun, then at the shadow of 
the rose arches falling across her half-finished bank. 
“ We’re late. That’s Grandfather getting impa- 
tient ! It’s past five; come along.’’ 

She led the way, holding the graceful silver 
thing; Archie followed, carrying the wooden box 
with all the trash of empty wrappings. . . .As he 
hastened at the land-booted heels of the boyishly- 
clad £irl, he could have allowed Grandfather to 
become more impatient still. Always and perpetu- 
ally Grandfather!! Never a clear half-hour of 
this girl did he, Archie, get to himself ! ! ! ! ! Yet he 
must. He felt that now, when at last by one acci- 
dental flash he seemed to have learnt something 
about her that he might not have come to know 
in weeks of acquaintanceship, now he must be al- 
lowed to talk to her, just once, uninterrupted, by 
himself. He must manage this somehow. 

So at the gate that led on to the lawn he stopped. 


154 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


“ I say,” he began, with an appealing glance. “ I 
Tvant to ask you something. Are you very busy 
to-morrow? I mean, could you just spare time to- 
morrow afternoon to come and have tea with me? ” 

She said : “ But we always have tea together.” 

“ I mean, couldn’t you let me give you tea for 
once? Up at my caravan? You’ve never been to 
look at it yet. I do wish you would? ” 

“ I — Yes ! Thank you. I’ll come,” she promised 
at once. She suddenly felt she must take the 
opportunity of saying something to him. . . . 

That evening old Mr. Rice-Mathews, over his 
(forbidden) cigar in the veranda was more am- 
icably eccentric than Archie Laverock had known 
him in his flights from topic to topic ; from motors 
and the new car, which was being sent down for 
his inspection next week, to the subject of Money 
and the many things it cannot buy, thence to mild 
questioning about Archie’s childhood and the 
mother (a girl from Wales herself) that he scarcely 
remembered, thence to the psycho-analytical theo- 
ries of Doctor Ernest Jones, the old man prattled 
on, with scarcely a break, to his protestations that 
Archie must return to Rlios after he had taken his 
caravan back to London. 

Archie w T as booked to return “ The Navarac ” to 
its rightful owner the following week. 

“ You may be sure I’ll come back, Sir, if the 
firm can spare me,” Archie promised him, with a 
tinge of anxiety. 

The thought of “ the Firm ” disconcerted him. 
“ Three weeks,” they had said. He had been in 
Wales, spending fifteen golden hours out of the 


CALLING 


155 


twenty-four up at Rhos, for just over three weeks. 
The Firm had other enterprises on hand for which 
they wanted him. And the highly qualified chauf- 
feur whom they were sending down with the new 
car was perfectly capable of taking Laverock’s 
place — if not in his role as son of the house and 
assistant gardener, then at least in continuing old 
Mr. Rice-Mathews’ education. 

Archie tried to persuade himself that this last 
was not so, and that give him, Archie, another fort- 
night at the job, it would be all the better for the 
old gentleman. 

Very definitely Archie did not want to leave 
Rhos just yet. He wanted to stay near Mauve — - 
Mauve who had just slipped through the long win- 
dows into the drawing-room, and who was sitting 
down, as on that first evening, at the piano. All his 
wishes hovered about her, even as the moths 
whirred and spun about the lighted lamps on the 
veranda table. 

Across the table Mr. Rice-Mathews watched the 
pleasantly-cut young profile, dark against the rosy 
globe, turned towards the window; and presently 
the old man said, u What if the Firm found they 
did not need you any more, Archie? ” 

The Rover shook his head gravely. “ A bad look- 
out for me, Sir. My luck would be out then, with a 
vengeance ! ” 

The old man smiled thoughtfully. “ I don’t see 
your luck out for a very long time, boy. The gods 
love you, I think.” 

“ You mean you think I shall die young? ” 

“ Worse things can happen to a man,” returned 
the old invalid mildly. “ Don’t you think the 


156 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


crowded hour of glorious life and the ( quick cur- 
tain ’ would he better than fourscore years of per- 
fect quiet and medicine-bottles? ” 

“ Every time, Sir,” agreed Archie gently — re- 
membering certain pals of his who had ended 
glorious and zestful lives by a quick curtain in- 
deed. . . . 

“ But I didn’t mean that, my dear boy,” his host 
added quickly. “ Die young? Not you. Only in 
the sense that you need not be old whenever you 
come to die, you fortunate ones. May you live long 
and happy, and enjoy these ‘ Almonds of Life’ (as 
they’re called in that book), those almonds for 
which others had no teeth. You’ll keep those fine 

teeth of yours to the end, I expect, Archie ” he 

murmured ; “ remember that I shall always hope 
you found those almonds sweet ” 

“ Thank you very much, Sir,” said the Rover 
pleasantly, but vaguely; for what was all this 
about? 

The young man was listening less to the old one 
than to the music that the girl was making in the 
drawing-room now. To-night Mauve did not play 
Beethoven, but some gay, wild, gipsy-sounding 
thing that danced and laughed. To-morrow at the 
caravan he would ask her what it was. 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 

CLIMAX AGAIN 

“ Tu m’as dit ‘ Je pense & toi 
Tout le jour/ 

Mais tu penses moins i\ moi 
Qu’ il l’amour/’ 

— Paul Geraldy. 

S HE was not coming until four o’clock. But 
by three o’clock that afternoon young Lave- 
rock had everything ready for his visitor; 
the caravan swept and garnished and sweet with 
the breath of honeysuckle that he had crammed 
into the gay crock standing on the bureau, the clean 
tray-cloth fished out, the jam -sandwiches cut, cream 
in the brown jug, cherries on the old blue-and-white 
dish — never in the Future would he see blue-and- 
white china, without seeing in imagination these 
cherries ! — and the kettle boiling. 

The Rover sat on the top-step, looking down the 
havfield (at the end of which the caravan was 
pitched), watching the path from Rhos. Ample 
time he had, in this drowsy, perfect June after- 
noon, to think of the things he had already pon- 
dered during the night, the hundred things that he 
meant to say to her when she came. 

But when he caught sight of a summery dress 
moving between the hay-cocks the hundred things 
went ; and he could think only of her name. 

Mauve, Mauve ! 


157 


158 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


All astir, he strode down the path to meet her. 
She wore the most becoming frock she had; a 
simple, straight-hanging muslin of her name-sake 
colour, with amethysts dangling at her throat, and 
a shady hat with a band of lilac satin. A woman 
would have noticed that the ribbon was new, that 
it matched precisely the silk stockings above the 
plain grey shoes, that altogether Miss Rice- 
Mathews was wearing her clothes with a difference 
(slight and subtle, but a difference), and that she 
looked as nearly a conventionally “ pretty ” girl as 
she ever could or would look. 

Archie Laverock was noTV past thinking whether 
she were pretty or plain. She was just Mauve. 
She filled — how entirely! — the young man’s 
horizon. 

But as he greeted her, he merely said the usual 
thing about how jolly it was of her to have 
come. . . . And, as she set foot (long, slender feet 
of hers!) for the first time in his caravan-dwelling, 
and also said the usual thing about how delightful 
it all looked . . . not a word yet of what either had 
intended to say to the other. 

He thought he knew", after yesterday afternoon 
and last night, exactly what he wanted. The fac- 
tor of “ somebody else ” — whether in Persia or just 
round the corner — made him keen. It spurred him 
and kept him poised, ready, waiting as if for the 
start of a race. The girl — this girl that somebody 
else wanted — she w r as his goal. 

For the girl herself things were not nearly as 
simple as this. (For the girl, things seldom are!) 
She, too, had pondered, last night. What, she won- 
dered, had been happening to her? For five years 


CLIMAX AGAIN 


159 


she had looked upon herself as a woman whose 
heart was dedicated to a memory — a woman from 
whose existence the element of masculine interest 
had been “ washed out.” Now — it almost seemed 
as if her life was filled by a trifle interest. . . . 
Not only one man! Three men at once. . . . 

There was Basil, that man in the Past. . . . But 
surely all that which had been her life . . . Surely 
that all remained the same. . . . 

Then there was Archie Laverock, this man of the 
Present. Why did he loom so importantly, these 
days? Certainly he was better than she had antici- 
pated. . . . When u the Firm ” had announced that 
they were sending down a young demobilized offi- 
cer, an ex-captain, called Laverock, she had not 
expected such a pleasant young man, so compan- 
ionable, so amusing, such an acquisition. ' Quite 
presentable, though not exactly </oocMooking. . . . 
For here Mauve differed from Lucy Joy, from 
Megan the maid, and from a score of her sex who 
had found Archie Laverock’s the handsomest face 
upon which they had set eyes. Mauve Rice- 
Mathews was of those who find Beauty in one type 
only. Men she required to be squarer in build than 
was the graceful *Rover; she looked for features 
more determined, of the hawk-cast. Eyes, to be 
fine, could only show one colour; blue, blue as the 
eyes of Basil! . . . Still, even as he was, this 
Archie Laverock contrived to be attractive. Espe- 
cially when he was there. Absent, one realized his 
flaws. . . . True, he had been wonderful at the 
moment when he saved Grandfather from dashing 
himself to pieces against a stone-wall. If it hadn’t 
been for Archie’s nerve and quickness — But on the 


160 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


other hand, if it hadn’t been for Archie’s driving- 
lessons Grandfather would never have run into 
danger at all. . . . 

Grandfather, of course, adored the young 
man. . . . Yet how long had he been here? Three 
weeks! What were three weeks! — Compared to 
the years in which Mauve had lived only to dream 
about Basil ! It’s true she expected that she would 
miss Archie Laverock when he went. But surely — 
surely not for very long — 

Last night she had been determined to explain 
to Archie that if he imagined she, Mauve, was at- 
tached to the man who had sent her a silver per- 
fume-sprinkler from Persia, he was entirely wrong. 

This morning she had thought. “ Why should 
I, after all, say anything about that? What has it 
to do with Archie Laverock? ” Now, again, she 
rather wished she had an excuse for mentioning 
it and for explaining l ’affaire Lionel to Archie. . . . 

For, thirdly, there was Lionel on her mind. Lio- 
nel, the man who refused to be refused. Lionel, 
whom she had not seen since Nineteen Fifteen, but 
who was now on his way home. All these years 
she had taken numbly for granted the devotion of 
Lionel. The absent can always be taken for 
granted, put off with a brief friendly note, or a 
Christmas card with a view of Rhos in the snow* 
Why was she beginning to wonder, now, how she 
should feel towards Lionel when he came, and what 
she should say? 

Meanwhile why could she not make up her mind 
exactly what she felt about Archie Laverock? Why 
did he, Archie, make her, who had lived in the 
same place with him for nearly a month now, sud- 


CLIMAX AGAIN 


161 


denly shy, disturbed? Impossible to mention yes- 
terday to him now, or anything she really meant. 
Anything else, any trifle seemed preferable. . . . 

So, with a gaiety just too emphatic to be 
natural, she admired the pattern of the numnah 
on the divan, and the small plaster cast of a girl’s 
head upon the bureau, and the brilliance of the 
windows forming the picture of hayfield and elms 
outside, and all the housewifely contrivances that 
made of this hut-upon-wheels a wanderer’s para- 
dise. . . . 

Meanwhile Archie, doing the honours, remem- 
bered in a distrait manner the remarks of some 
American visitors, who, being introduced to “ The 
Navarac ” while it was on show in London, had 
cried, “ Say, young man, who is going to quit living 
in a place like this to settle into a mere Home? 
Why, you’re preparing a death-blow to Marriage ! ” 
The Arrant Rover had smiled and had said, 
“Well ...” in his gentlest, his most defiant tone. 
“ A Home-breaker,” was it? Tant pis. 

Just now the thing that filled his mind was “ By 
Jove, imagine setting off in this for a honey -moon ! ” 

Upon his thought broke in the voice of Mauve. 
“ It seems to me you’ve absolutely everything here 
that you could get in a three-hundred-a-year flat, 
but for one thing.” 

“And that ?” He asked — wondering if she 

could have guessed what he’d been thinking. . . . 

But she answered with that emphatic brightness, 
“ You haven’t got a bath ! ” • 

“Haven’t I?” he retorted, and produced from 
its hiding-place an India-rubber bag about eight 
inches square, containing the folding canvas bath 


162 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


that was filled each morning from the huge kettle 
which now boiled the water for tea. 

“ Oh, do let us have tea sitting on the steps,” 
was Mauve’s suggestion. “ It’s so lovely outside 
just now, and we can use all this floor for the 
table ” 

So they sat ; she now on the top-step of the cara- 
van and he on a lower step, facing her and looking 
up at her. She poured out the tea, since she was 
near the things, and handed down his cup to him. 
Together they ate jam-sandwiches; together they 
laughed (unevenly) at nothing; with laughter that 
held back what was coming only as a child’s soft 
hands may dam for a moment the fluent mountain 
rill. 

Came, at last, the inevitable Pause; the silence. 
Mauve, leaning backwards, put both the empty tea- 
cups on the table. She had an impulse to say, 
“ It must be twenty to — or twenty past — some- 
thing. ...” That came to nothing; she remained 
incomprehensibly fluttered and silent, sitting on the 
step, her slim hand hanging beside her lilac skirt. 

Young Laverock, just below her, was on the point 
of drawing out his cigarette-case and offering it to 
her. Then he changed his mind. His eyes fastened 
upon her hand, hanging idle. Impulsively he put 
out his own long, tanned fingers, holding them out 
towards hers in a gesture that expressed more than 
words. 

She understood. That out-held hand of his com- 
pleted the appeal where it had been left by that 
calling glance between them in the rock-garden 
yesterday. Everything in between was null and 
void! He held out his hand. 


CLIMAX AGAIN 


163 


But for yet another instant she chose not to 
understand. She moved deliberately — she took 
a couple of cherries from the old blue-and-white 
dish and put them into his hand as if that was 
what he had been asking for. 

With equal deliberation the young man took the 
fruit and placed it back upon the dish from which 
she had taken it. Then, again, and with purpose, 
he held out his free hand. 

This time he made a slight movement towards 
the girl ; he also fastened upon her that same look 
that she had met, yesterday. 

She met it now. 

She drew back, saying quickly, involuntarily, 
“ No . . . ! ” 

“No?” repeated, softly and very tenderly, the 
Arrant Rover. 

“ Archie,” she went on, quickly, in a voice that 
was at the same time emphatic and uncertain, “ I 
want to tell you something. No, you are not going 
to hold my hand while I am telling you . . . nor 
at all. . . . It’s something . . . It's rather 
difficult.” 

He looked at her. At that moment he loved her, 
very dearly and sincerely. . . . 

There is a type of psychologist who would correct 
this by saying, “ He thought he loved her.” Accord- 
ing to them Love is a matter of duration (or of 
having known the girl for, say, eight years). Pos- 
sibly these good people hold that is not sunlight, 
because it passes from the landscape which it has 
enriched. Still, what is either Love or not, but 
thinking makes it so? . . . Differently, but no less 
sincerely, had Mauve loved Basil; no more genu- 


1G4 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


inely rang Lionel’s attachment to her than did the 
feeling of Archie Laverock at that moment. 

To help her, he took up gently, “ Is it something 
about what I couldn’t help seeing yesterday in the 
garden ? ” 

“ It’s partly about that,” Mauve answered, lock- 
ing her hands about her knees and fixing a per- 
turbed gaze upon the blue screen of hills beyond the 
hayfield. “ I think you took that — that card, you 
know, for something that it wasn’t.” 

Pause. He waited for her to go on. 

She told him outright, “ I am not engaged to the 
man who wrote that on the card ” 

Archie waited. . . . 

“ I don’t think I shall ever be engaged to any- 
body again,” said Mauve Rice-Mathews quickly, 
and blushing as she spoke. “ I was engaged . . * 
the summer I came out . . .” 

Archie said very softly, “ Is it fair to ask ? 

Was it to him? ” 

“ To Lionel? Oh, no! No! Never! I hadn’t 
met him then — at least not since I’d been grown-up. 
It was to quite a different person. Now, he was ‘ the 
one person in the world ’ for me, as they say. . . . 

He Really, Archie, I don’t quite know why I’m 

telling you all this,” said the girl. . . . 

Thereby taking the turning to the long road of 
confidences. . . . 

To her own bewildered surprise, she found her- 
self talking and talking; in words that grew ever 
quicker, more confidential, she unfolded the old, 
unhappy, far-off story of Basil. . . . Yes, to this 
other young man, this young man of whom five 
weeks ago she had never even heard! To this 


CLIMAX AGAIN 


165 


Archie Laverock who sat, silently attentive, 
perched just below her on the steps of this caravan 
which was as foreign to this well-known place as 
he was himself, Mauve found herself imparting 
things that she had never told another creature, 
and that she had never before dreamed of talking 
about. Not to Grandfather . . . not to any woman- 
friend! Little memories that she had buried in 
her heart — trivial incidents. . . . 

“ Once when we were waiting for the hairdresser 
to come and do my hair the day I was presented, 
he said . . .” 

“ Can you imagine caring so much that one 
thinks it beautiful even that he should have a tiny 
chicken-pox scar on his cheek ” 

She ran on ; the self-contained and detached Miss 
Rice-Mathews, carried away by this orgy of self- 
revelation in a fashion that would not occur to a 
normally expansive character. Archie listened, 
waiting, encouraging her with that silent attention, 
that stillness of his. . . . Golden evening light 
began to transfigure the country-side about them; 
a field away someone was calling, “ Coof, coof, 
coof !” to the cows. . . . Milking-time; and 
Mauve w^as talking literally until the cows came 
home. 

For once unheeding what o’clock it might be, 
she went on brokenly, a When he wrote ! ... Do 
you know that even now I never see that particular 
kind of thick grey note-paper without feeling 
knives go into me. ...” 

Brokenly she said it. But even as she did some- 
thing seemed to break in her too; something very 
strange happened. Through the “ break ” a tiny 


166 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


Voice, deep down in her mind, seemed to let itself 
up and say, “ Knives? You feel them go into you? 
Don’t you mean you felt them? How long is it 
since the sight of that grey note-paper gave you 
that stab in the heart? Would it stab you now? 
Are you sure you’re being perfectly truthful about 
this?” 

She was of Welsh descent; and the Welsh have 
the reputation -of being, of all races on earth, the 
least truthful. One reason for this may be linked 
up with the Welsh love of drama, the Welsh gift 
for gesture, for mimicry. That a story be dra* 
matically set forth, its more picturesque aspects 
be brought home to their hearers, is a need to these 
Celts. The sterling, the more literal Saxon may 
not feel this need. Mauve Rice-Mathews, on this 
unique occasion, did feel the need. So she smoth* 
ered that tiny Voice of sincerity; and with as much 
zest as she would have put into her playing of pas* 
sionate music (her only out-let until now!) she 
pursued, “ I sometimes thought that if it weren’t 
for Grandfather I should manage to get myself 
‘ accidentally drowned whilst bathing ’ somewhere. 
As it is I feel it’s just the shell of me that walks 
about at Rhos ; the real ‘ me ’ went out when he 
did ” 

Again the tiny voice within her took up, more 
loudly, “ Is that true? Are you •sure? Is ‘only* 
the shell of you here? It was so some time ago.; 
But now? Does i the real you’ enjoy nothing? 
Aren’t you rather enjoying telling Archie Lave* 
rock all this? ” 

Against that voice she went on, urgently, taking 
the tale up at another point. “ The other day on 


CLIMAX AGAIN 


167 


the tennis-court! When you seemed to think that 
eight years was such a long time to be faithful to 
the same person who loved one. I laughed to my- 
self — if you can call it laughing. For five years 
I've thought of nothing but that one, same person 
of mine. Who didn't even care, except for just 
those few months ” 

She choked a little; tears sprang to her dark 
eyes. 

The Voice, no longer tiny, interrupted, “ Are you 
sure you’re still crying for Basil? Are you quite 
certain these aren’t the kind of tears one sheds 
pleasurably at a theatre over some deliciously mis- 
erable scene well acted? Sure you're not lialf-act- 
ing yourself? ” 

Unsteadily, defiantly, Mauve went on. “ I've 
never changed ” 

The Voice : “ Haven’t you? ” 

Mauve: “ even if everything else has! I 

could never forget him ! I could never . . . feel as 
other girls do about . . . people. . . 

The voice, loudly, “ Couldn’t you? Think again, 
think again ! ” 

Mauve : “ I think it horrible when the w T ar- 

wddows marry. His did. I could never, never un- 
derstand that sort of thing ” She caught her 

breath on a sob and ended even more urgently: 
“ Some things have to last, Archie, forever! 
They’re meant , for some of us! For me, it’s 
always! ” 

The Voice within retorted, “Is it? is it?” but 
was drowmed in the sound of another voice beside 
her. For, clear and happily-scornful rang out at 
last the Hover’s denial.. 


168 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


“No!” lie cried. “No ” into a laugh. 

“ Don’t you believe it ! ” 

Mauve opened widely upon him those dark eyes, 
brimming with those tears of such equivocal ori- 
gin. A tear dropped upon her wrist. It was then, 
possibly, that she found that both her hands were 
in the clasp of Archie Laverock's hands. A clasp 
magnetic and comforting, with the warm current 
of Life beating through it. All startled, she left 
her hands where they were. She raised her incred- 
ulous glance from them to the smiling face of this 
young man. 

He cried again, “ It’s all wrong, my dear ! ” 

She, in a daze, told herself, “ He can’t have said 
‘ my dear.’ I’m imagining it. He can’t be holding 
my hands. He can’t be talking to me like this.” 

But he was, shaking his head at her, his head 
blond and sleek as the love-plumage of the yellow- 
hammer. “ All this that you’ve been telling me 
about. It’s not meant to last. You aren’t intended 
to go harking back to a thing like that for keeps. 
It’s done. It’s all over now, Mauve; can't you 
see that? ” 

She stared at him as if he had just roused her 
from an uneasy sleep, from dreams. 

“ Fidelity is a wonderful thing and all that, I 
daresay. Must be,” admitted the Rover more so- 
berly. “ But, good Lord ! ” he expostulated. 
“ Even a Blue Rock only hangs on to the other 
Blue Rock as long as it’s alive! But this is dead 
and done. You can’t — Oh, hang it; this is impos- 
sible ” he muttered, but, while the words on 

his lips seemed to be of her by-gone love-story, his 
eyes pleaded another suit. 


CLIMAX AGAIN 


169 


Heat-haze simmered over the hedge. There was 
more than a hint of thunder in the air. Another 
electricity seemed to crackle and sparkle and 
render tense the atmosphere about these two on 
the steps. Archie Laverock was set and keen ex- 
actly as he had been that evening when he had 
danced with Lucy Joy; as fiercely eager to snatch 
away from any other man the girl so near him. He 
did not know that these were his feelings, had been 
his feelings for more times already than he could 
have counted on the fingers of one clasping brown 
hand. For he had now reached the happy point of 
certainty that this ivas different. . . . 

Perhaps it was. ... He would have said there 
was no comparison between his longing for Mauve 
to become “ home ” to him, and that flame lighted 
up, for an evening, by the Beauty-Girl. Some 
women would say that his love for Lucy had been 
more than his love for Mauve ; that there had been 
more sheer impulse in it, more delight. . . . Others 
would ask for themselves, the “ deeper ” love that 
he was ready to give to Mauve. The fact remains 
that he had loved others; this evening it was only 
Mauve of whom he was conscious at all. Vanished, 
all other faces. Close to him, Mauve’s face; 
troubled, desirable. 

As for her, she was past thinking even as clearly 
as he could. She drifted towards a tide that she 
did not recognize or understand. Urgently at- 
tracted she felt herself now towards this young 
man whom she did not even consider handsome — 
and she did not know that the real name of the 
attraction was not Archie Laverock, but All-Youth ; 
Youth Resurgent, Given the circumstances, the 


170 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


right moment, and any young, attractive and at- 
tracted man must have been the influence to catch 
her away at last out of her sluggish brooding back- 
water into the current of stormy, stimulating, pas- 
sionate life. 

But she saw only Archie. . . . She looked at 
him — thought incoherently, 66 A pity his eyes are 
all mixy, instead of blue ! ” could not meet those 
eyes and looked away; began a sentence, broke it 
off, and muttered in a forced little voice, “ I think 
I must have left my handkerchief in the caravan.” 

“ Take this ; it’s a clean one,” murmured the 
Rover; and dragged from his pocket a dim-blue 
crepe-de-Chine thing with “A. L. L.” in lemon- 
yellow enclosed by a heart, and obviously embroid- 
ered by some amateur. 

Mauve took, and used it. Archie’s fingers pris- 
oned again the hand they had released. What 
worlds away was Mauve, now, from the girl who 
had given, instead of her hand, cherries! For 
another second she sat with questions flashing 
wildly through her mind. " Why did I tell him all 
that? Why wasn’t I even angry with him for his 
fearful impertinence in saying, ‘ it’s all over now ’? 
Why do I let him hold my hands like this? He is 
going to kiss them ” 

Then he did kiss them, her slender, long fingers, 
roughened by so much garden-work ; he smoothed 
them against his cheek, and she allowed it! He 
moved up, even as she — hardly believing it of her- 
self! — moved down towards him on the caravan 
steps; and when he took her into his arms it was 
not a question of « allowing” it; she rested there 


CLIMAX AGAIN 171 

perfectly contented, lifting her face to his, taking 
his caresses in triumph and wonder. 

Mauve Rice-Mathews would not have believed 
it of herself. 

Later, she found it hard to believe that it actually 
happened. Such are the auto-suggestive powers of 
Woman, that some day, perhaps, Mauve will believe 
that it never — or scarcely — happened at all — this 
love-scene that at the time was so totally unex- 
pected, so foreign. No part of her own ordered, 
conventional life was this, but a flash of something 
incongruous, blithe, pagan ! as if some alien species 
of great butterfly had alighted upon an arm of the 
moss-sleeved, fern-fringed Welsh oak, and had 
there preened wide wings of gay, unknown, and 
unabashed hues ! 

Convention has it that it is only into the lives of 
young men that Love will flutter, taking this spe- 
cial form. Hence the rather helpless bewilderment 
of the young woman to whom this had happened, 
and who — as I have said — did not even know the 
thing by its name. 

Twice she repeated, “ Archie . . . Archie . . .” 

“ Mauve,” he responded, deeply tender. “ You 
darling. ...” 

She rested against his shoulder for a long mo- 
ment; thinking of nothing, analysing nothing — just 
blissful. 

It was the sound of the little wall-clock, chiming 
behind them in the caravan, that made her start 
and draw out of his clasp, crying incredulously, 
“ Can that be the time? Archie, your clock cant 
be right? ” 


172 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


“ Never mind the time/’ he begged ardently, 
huskily. “ Stay as yon were ! ” 

“ I can’t possibly. I must go to the house. Din- 
ner, Grandfather ! ” she reminded him breathlessly. 
Putting aside his arms, she sprang up ; she straight- 
ened her shady hat and her amethyst beads. She 
ran past him, down the steps, and stood on the 
grass, looking up at him as she had looked on that 
first, that so different occasion. 

Her eyes laughed up into his, but when she next 
spoke there was a pleading note in her voice. 

“ Archie, do you mind? I want you not to come 
up to Rhos to dinner please. Not to-night ! ” 

“ Oh, but I say ! ” he expostulated, dismayed, 

“When I’ve only just seen you ” 

“ You’ll see me to-morrow. I don’t think I could 
let you come. . . . Before Grandfather, and every- 
thing. . . . Please! I ... I must . . . collect 
my ideas, and think, that's what I want to do first,” 
explained Miss Rice-Mathews, confusedly and 
flushed and laughing. “ Not just yet, Archie. 
Come to-morrow . . . yes . . . very well, you can 

come up early if you like ” 

“ And at least,” stipulated Archie eagerly, 

“ you’ll let me walk back with you now ” 

“ No ; please ! Grandfather would insist upon 
your coming! ” 

“Well, just to the stile, then!” 

So down the field they walked together, their 
long shadow striping the liay-cocks, the setting sun 
in their eyes. At the stile he took her again into 
his arms — but now she was distracted by her haste; 
it was not as the first embrace had been. 


CLIMAX AGAIN 


173 


She disengaged lierself, hurried over the stile. 
On the other side a darkling beec*h-wood stood 
waiting to swallow up the slim, radiant, lilac-clad 
shape of her. She turned to wave to him as he stood 
in the bright field looking after her. 

Then she took to her heels and ran. 

In record time she reached the house, called, 
“ Ten minutes, Megan ! ” to the parlour-maid ; she 
dashed upstairs to her room and began her rapid 
change for dinner. Even as she did so, she mur- 
mured to herself one phrase; one short, exultant 
phrase. . . . 

She moved about the room, dressing; and what 
she did, meanwhile, was perhaps what she had 
called “ collecting ideas.” For while one hand 
hastily unfastened her frock, the other sought a 
drawer in her bureau that contained just one snap- 
shot of a man in polo-kit. Into the face of this, 
Mauve smiled friendly -wise, nodding as it were a 
good-bye. For she then tore it across and across, 
putting a match to the fragments. Her shoes, as 
she changed them, reminded her of something else ; 
from.the depth of her wardrobe she drew quickly 
forth a pair of slim white satin slippers of obsolete 
shape. They had danced and danced at some ball 
in May, Nineteen Fourteen. Why keep? Mauve 
dropped them into her waste-basket. They were 
followed by a sheaf of six-year-old theatre pro- 
grammes which she took from the bottom of a 
faded sachet, and crumpled, light-heartedly, again 
repeating that phrase so oddly chosen. 

For, strangely enough, it did not include the 
name of the young man whose arm seemed still 


174 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


warm about her shoulders, whose caresses still 
lingered on her throat and face, whose “ You dar- 
ling! ” sounded even yet in her ears. 

Was it almost as if Mauve were not even thinking 
of Archie Laverock — not, at least, of Archie the 
individual? 

The words she whispered again in triumph before 
she flew downstairs, ran, “ I’m cured. I’m cured. 
Tm cured of Basil! ” 


CHAPTER TWELVE 


ANOTHER ANTI-CLIMAX 

“ Like a child dissatisfied with its dolls, our heart cries 1 Not 
this, not this.’ ” — Tagore. 


M EANWHILE, what about Archie Laverock 
himself? 

Alas . . . 


The phrases which he found himself most fre- 
quently repeating were : “ Good Lord ! What have 
I done? What have I let myself in for now? ” 

One hardly likes to think how short a time this 
came after the Rover’s last good-nights to Mauve, 
muttered with such ardour — such genuine ardour. 

There is a type of man said to be “ rough upon ” 
his boots and socks. It is not that he treads badly ; 
he wears through. Now the Archie-type is “ rough 
upon ” his emotions. He is so soon “ through ” 
with his sensations and sentiments. He is ready 
for more, for fresh, for other ones in a space of 
time incredible to the steadier, slow-thinking model. 
Hence bitter reproaches, hurled at the Archie- type, 
of “ His feelings are never very deep ! ” 

Deep enough in all conscience, however, was the 
dismay of the Arrant Rover on this evening, when 
(having emerged from the sensuous trance of 
courtship ) he came presently to realize two things. 

One — That this afternoon’s interview had culmi- 
nated in what must be presently stamped officially 
as an engagement to Miss Mauve Rice-Mathews. 

175 


176 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


Two — That Mauve, after all, was not The One 
Girl for him. 

This second point came to him more slowly than 
the first, hut with ever-increasing discomfort. 

He sat down alone on the caravan-steps where 
they had lately sat enlaced. He gnawed the stem 
of his pipe; and there, amid the star-light and the 
falling dew and the soft noises of beasts moving 
behind the stone hedge and the plaintive serenade 
of an owl from the beech-wood and the whole fra- 
grant breathing of the country in its sleep, the 
young man put in hours of thinking about this last 
girl to whom he had been making love — fool that 
he was ! 

He was very angry with himself, but even so he 
raged more in sorrow than in anger. For wasn ? t 
it Disappointment once again; the infernal, well- 
known disappointment that seemed to get worse 
each time? 

There are men who would consider that Lave- 
rock had “ done thundering well for himself, snaf- 
fling the pet granddaughter of an old man with all 
that money and that topping place in Wales.” It 
is not so much that Archie was “ above ” this con- 
sideration as that it never struck him to give it a 
thought. His thoughts of the place were memories 
of how keen Mauve Rice-Mathews was on it. “My 
roots are here ” she’d said. Never would she allow 
herself to be dragged anywhere else. Any man who 
married her would have to take root beside her, 
thought the appalled Rover. He pictured that life. 

Always this valley, where the morning paper got 
in at three in the afternoon. Always this circle 


ANOTHER ANTI-CLIMAX 


177 


of dull country peole. Always these same inter- 
ests ; he seemed to hear her composed girlish voice 
uttering their names. 

“My rock-garden . . and that. 

“My seedling •geums . . .” and those things. 

“ My Minorcas . . . ” and the rest of ’em. 

“ The Rectory cook had a very old recipe 
for ” . . . and so on. 

“ Grandfather, time you took your sleep. Archie, 
Vd like you to think over that path-through-tlie- 
laurels-idea . . . ” yards of it. 

How, thought Archie now, could one stick it day 
in, day out, even for the most wonderful girl in 
the world? Mauve was a stay-putter, a Blue-Rock 
type herself. If that fellow Basil had lived, she 
would have gone on caring for him until she was a 
hundred and six. Now — worse luck, worse luck — 
she had been persuaded by Archie to start caring in 
that way for Archie himself. 

Ghastly fiasco. . . . 

Why hadn’t he seen before that she wasn’t a bit 
his sort of girl? Anything but. Anything but! 

His pipe went out. Presently he realized that 
he was getting chilly about the shoulders ... by 
Jove, he was wet through. Not only the gentle dew 
from Heaven had soaked him, but it had started 
to rain. On the uncarried hay, too. He got up, 
stretched himself, and turned into the caravan. He 
felt very empty. ... A hunk of bully-beef thrust 
between two hunks of brown bread was his dinner 
at midnight. He gulped a stiff whisky, got between 
his blankets, and went off to sleep almost at once. 

Almost at once, though, it seemed to be dawn 


178 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


again, and Archie woke with that horrible feeling 
of something impending, what, he did not for a 
moment remember. 

Then, with a shock ... a Of course, Mauve!” 

In that most depressing hour of palely growing 
light and restless bird-noise and lowered human 
vitality, Archie, turning on his couch, meditated 
upon this late love of his and saw her unkindly as 
men do not see a woman to whom they have always 
been indifferent. Completely unattractive he saw 
her now. A young woman like hundreds of others 
of her class and kind. As more light came greyly 
through his open windows, as the small objects 
around him grew slowly clearer, so his warped 
view of poor Mauve grew ever more critical. 

She was plain, yes, plain-headed. She was man- 
aging, she was brusque, she was “ clever,” she was 
all a woman oughtn’t to be ! 

(Lord, what had possessed him?) 1 

Almost worst of all, as a sweetheart she was 
disappointing, inadequate, frigid! . . . Yes, it 
amounted to that. . . . 

“ Judge of your lover at the parting!’’ warns 
the French proverb. It is the last caress that is 
remembered as characteristic. 

So Archie recalled — not that glowing first mo- 
ment when she all lighted up had moved half-way 
to meet his welcoming arms. That was washed out 
by the other, the last moment when he had held 
her to say good-night at the stile. ... He remem- 
bered only how hurriedly she had pulled away 
from him, turning to him as it were the cheek of a 
perfunctory aunt. . . . 

Miserable show. . . . 


ANOTHER ANTI CLIMAX 


179 


She wasn’t the sort of girl he wanted to kiss, 
or to look at, or even to talk to, or to be with at 
all any more. 

Yet — Here he was. Practically “ accepted.” 
, To-day, in a few hours’ time, he would have to go 
up to Rhos to confirm the (ghastly) situation. 

He started to go up at an unearthly hour, in fact 
as soon as he saw the first blue curl of wood smoke 
ascending lazily from the chimney above the beech- 
trees at the end of the hayfield. Then he realized 
that Mauve might not be up for another hour. 

Every minute of the sixty seemed a week in Pur- 
gatory to the Rover, wondering how he could bring 
himself to behave as the decently -delighted, newly- 
accepted fiance of this unwanted girl whom he had 
won over to care for him in that exclusive, con- 
centrated, individual, and destroyingly constant 
manner in which this sort of girl always did 
u care.” 

He now understood Mauve only too well, he 
thought. . . . 

The truth is he understood her worse than he had 
understood girls who were, on the surface, less 
stereotyped than she. 

An illusion of Archie’s sex is that, though it be 
usual enough for a man to look upon Woman 
merely as a Caressable or Charming Toy, no 
“nice” girl has been known to look thus upon a 
man. 

Whereas . . . ! 

Take Miss Rice-Math ews, who, while Archie 
tossed his caravan, had spent an equally restless 
night up at Rhos. Her first mood — impersonally 


180 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


vivid joie de vivre of convalescence! — had passed. 
She was left staring in amazement at a “ streak of 
herself ” that she didn’t recognize. ( It was prob- 
ably the same “ streak ” that lent fire and mastery 
to her piano-playing, but that she didn’t know 
either.) She harassed herself — her ordinary con- 
ventionally-bred self — with questions. Chief of 
them was “ But if I really don’t think Archie Lave- 
rock has much in him after all, why, why, why did 
I like his kissing me? ” she blushed for herself, 
hotly, into the pillow. 

She finally thought, “Well! If I'm engaged to 
him, 1’m engaged! (Grandfather will love it.) 
And that’ll be that, I suppose ! ” 

It would have saved young Archie some of the 
most remorse-and-panic-stricken moments of Lis 
life could he have had a glimpse into the mind of 
this girl then. 

He had no glimpse into her mind, not even in 
the next interview between these two young human 
creatures, who had come into each other’s lives for 
one unique and golden hour. Never in this world 
will Archie Laverock know truly wdiat Mauve 
Rice-Mathews felt on that (to him) morning of 
Calamity. 

She came to meet him. 

That was the first shock. 

She was much earlier than he’d expected. As 
he walked slowly down that sopping liayfield 
through a mist that might or might not develop into 
more rain, he caught sight of the slim figure, with 
that old brown oilskin pulled on over her woolly 
jumper and rough skirt, grey as the weather; 


ANOTHER ANTI-CLIMAX 181 

clumping clogs disguised her feet as she climbed 
that stile. 

He had not thought his heart could sink any 
lower. But it did so even as he waved and hurried 
on towards her. He knew, then, that if he hadn’t 
been so bored in this place at the start with abso- 
lutely no other interest, he would never have given 
her a thought. . . . 

Still! Here they were! He must begin some- 
thing cheery to break the ice. Brrrrr . . . 

“ Good-morning,” he called with a good effect 
of heartiness. “ This is rather a change from yester- 
day, isn’t it? ” — then hastily, “ the weather I mean. 
It looked as if we were in for — for days more of it, 
didn’t it ” 

Here he came up to the stile and held out a hand. 
But she jumped down without that. Shy, he 
thought in dismay, because she cared so dread- 
fully. . . . 

With his heart in his damp brogues he went on 
“ lightly ” about the unreliability of the Welsh 
Mountains. “ I thought that when they were pale 
lilac-colour, and all far away, like yesterday, it 
meant that the weather was ‘ set fair ’ for ever so 
long ” 

Here Mauve spoke rather brusquely, and without 
looking at him. She had her head down and was 
feeling in the pocket of her jumper. “ I’ve brought 
you ” she began. 

For just that instant as she spoke there flashed 
through the mind of young Laverock quite a se- 
quence of bitter thoughts on the subject of her hav- 
ing brought him anything at all. Sudden, hidden, 


182 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


violent revulsion took him against this intrusive, 
this ever-recurrent habit of women. 

Always they wanted to give you something! 
Some little thing ... or some big thing. . . . 
The privilege of calling them by their Christian 
names or the whole story of their last engagement 
or (as that maudlin song puts it) the Right to Love 
them All the While. (Ugh!) At the same time 
they insisted on spraying you with presents that 
they had chosen or knitted or something-ed for you 
themselves; this book you really ought to read, 
this waistcoat, this amber mouth-piece, letter-case, 
pair of motoring-gloves, muffler, mascot! It was 
unbearable; you never wanted them to do it, you’d 
much rather they didn’t, you told them so. They 
would do it . . . after Archie’s bad night and in 
his state of cold and hostile re-action, this chronic 
giving of gifts seemed to him the most repulsive 
trait in the whole Repellent Sex. (Genuinely, at 
that moment, he detested women.) 

Now, another of them was going to give him 
something. He wondered (all this still in that 
swiftest flash of thought) whether it would be am 
other silk handkerchief with his initials on it; he 
had four dozen of them. . . . 

Mauve finished her sentence, “ this, that came 

yesterday evening,” and handed to him — a telegram. 

“ Do open it,” she said, and while he ripped open 
the envelope he heard her explaining quickly, “ Of 
course you ought to have had it last night, but 
cook took it in just as she was busy with dinner 
and ‘ forgot ’ or something. She ought to have sent 
Megan or Cuenwen with it, but they ‘ weren’t 
speaking’ yesterday. I can’t discover what all 


ANOTHER ANTI-CLIMAX 


183 


these rows among the maids are about,” complained 
the young mistress of Rhos — to the equally igno- 
rant cause of the ‘ row.’ ” 

Neither she nor Archie would know how much 
seething jealousy or how many tear-stained scenes 
had been set in the Rhos’s kitchens during the last 
weeks, and all because each member of the staff 
wished to be the only one to attend upon “ her ” 
Mr. Laverock, to receive a smile, a good-morning, 
a thank you. The disturber (who after all realized 
but a little of the disturbances he caused) read the 
telegram which Cook had suppressed for a night 
rather than let the hand of a fellow-servant touch 
it. He guessed that it would contain tidings of 
certain white flannels at the cleaners’? 

But the message was from his firm, and it ran — 
“ Return at once with Navarac to London.” 
Suddenly Mauve’s eyes beheld an odd sight. 

She had been looking at Archie Laverock ever 
since he came up to her at the stile, in bewilderment 
and doubt. The doubt and bewilderment had been 
about herself as well as about this man who had 
held her in his arms yesterday. 

Questions buzzed in her: u Why is there this 
< change from yesterday ’ ? Why isn't he as he was 
last evening? For that matter, why am I not as 
I was? Why aren’t we saying or doing anything? 
Why didn’t he even take my hand — ah, he was go- 
ing to help me down from the stile, but I wouldn’t 
let him. Why wouldn’t I? What is happening? 
What is going to happen next? ” 

The answer to all the questions came with that 
lightning-swift glimpse of Archie Laverock’s face 
as he read the wire. 


184 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


It was suddenly so glad that it seemed trans- 
figured; radiant. A mask seemed to drop from it. 
Yes, there had been a mask. A mask of pretence, 
now dropped. 

The look lasted only for a second. Next instant 
his face became as it was before. She could hardly 
believe she had seen that gleam of delight, relief. 
In a tone of some consternation he was exclaiming, 
“ I say ! This is a bit of a shock ! ” 

(Here it occurred to both of them that neither 
of them had yet used the other’s name.) 

“ Look here,” said he, and handed her the wire. 

“ Return at once with Navarac to London.” 

For a moment Mauve scarcely took in the words 
of the message. 

She was still blankly wondering over that change 
of face. No getting over it, there had been a posi- 
tive shout of joy in his eyes. Joy! Because of his 
recall! It had gone again in an instant, he was 
now keeping a decent screen of dismay, but she'd 
seen. 

She’d seen. 

In that moment she had seen more of the Rover 
than she had done during all his time at Rlios. 
She was filled with mingled understanding, disillu- 
sionment, amusement, shame, regret, and even 
relief. 

Then, as she read that wire again, something else 
happened, rather oddly perhaps, but in the subter- 
ranean manner that the more crucial events of our 
lives do sometimes occur. 

For it was at this moment that Mauve Rice - 
Mathews, playing at last for her own best happiness, 
accepted the proposal of a man who was riot even 


ANOTHER ANTI-CLIMAX 


185 


there. He was not even in England. lie teas still 
on hoard a ship homeward hound from Persia. He 
was a square-built soldier-man — the huild she ad- 
mired — and he had in his steady blue eyes a look 
of purpose. He was her old love, Lionel, coming 
hack to her to try his luck again! 

Needless to say that Lionel himself would never 
know when it was that he was actually accepted; 
he would imagine that it took place weeks later, 
after he had proposed for the sixth — or was it 
seventh? — time of asking. Nor would Mauve ever 
admit it ( except to her own most hidden “ streak ” 
of frankness). As for young Laverock, he would 
never guess that he, departing out of this girl’s life, 
left open behind him a door that would otherwise 
have remained relentlessly closed, even against a 
lover so well suited to her as Lionel. 

Long afterwards, Mauve was to think, “Well! 
Archie Laverock cured me of Basil. He opened my 
eyes to several things about myself. And I’m sure 
I appreciate Lionel so . . . because of having 
known Archie.” 

However ! Few men believe that there are points 
on which a girl may gain from an interlude with 
one of these arrant rovers. Even the rovers them- 
selves appear convinced that the part they played 
in the life of the ex-love was compact solely of the 
hurt, the Pity of it! 

So Archie, standing there in the mist of a grey 
Morning- After-the-Interlude, was suffering already 
at least as much as he deserved for all his crimes. 
He began to say something about how soon he was 
afraid he and his caravan would have to be off — 

It was Mauve Rice-Mathews who cut the tangle. 


186 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


She said, quickly and in her most composed garden- 
party manner, “ Yes. Of course! You’ll have to go 
at once, won’t you? I’ll say good-bye to Grand- 
father for you.” Then, definitely significantly, “ It 
really is good-bye. I quite understand. It’s quite 
all right, Archie.” 

His lips parted. He gave a startled glance at 
her. He thought the girl was pretty gallant, un- 
derstanding and yet taking it like this. Then he 
felt a puppy for having to admit that it was even 
gallant of her. But in these circumstances, what 
on earth was left for the man to think, do, or say? 

He cleared his throat, began to say, “ Mauve ” 

But she stopped him with a smile. 

Then, just as he had done on the caravan-steps 
in the sunshine of yesterday when they had sat to- 
gether amid the warm fragrance of hay and honey- 
suckle and had been drawn together by the magic 
of youth, nearness, gaiety! — just as he had done 
then — she did now. She held out her slender 
hand — with what a difference! This time it was 
she who made him put his hand — with what a dif- 
ference! — into hers. 

She gave him an honest grasp which might have 
been that of another boy. Wonderful of her, 
thought he, not realizing in his discomfiture how 
little effort it actually was to her. 

“ Good-bye, Archie,” said Mauve Rice-Mathews., 
“ The best of luck ! ” 

Archie’s reply ( muttered ! ) may yet have reached 
her . . . “ bless you for an absolute dear ...” 

She turned, crossed the stile, disappeared 
through the mist that had now become rain. 

In the rain that had now set in for the day the 


ANOTHER ANTI-CLIMAX 


1ST 


Rover prepared his caravan for the road. In pour- 
ing rain he turned towards England again, 
through the weeping woods, the streaming high- 
ways, the vistas of drowned purple, sodden ivy 
green, and drenched indigo which are branded as 
the “ typical ” Welsh landscape — by so many an 
English tourist. They only count the sunless 
hours, these sojourners; like these, Archie Lave- 
rock forgot any day when this country had shown 
him one gleam of other weather. ... . . 

It rained on. . . . 

As the wet drove in sheets of whistling silver 
against “ The Navarac ” windows young Laverock 
told himself disgustedly that it never did anything 
but rain, in Wales. . . . 

It went on raining. w 











'■ I R « m • ’ ■ ». ft * r»j c , 







A 






















































PART III 
IDLENESS 

(FRANCE AND THE EMERALD 
COAST: JULY) 



CHAPTER THIRTEEN 


HE MEETS THE GIRLS 


“This novelty on Earth, this fair defect 
Of Nature. ...” 


— Milton (on Women). 


NE fortnight later the Rover, in a heaven 



of Midsummer weather, lay a basking dot 


of sunlit white — between turquoise sky and 
sea of sapphire streaked with emerald. 

He lay, stretched at ease, in a small white- 
painted motor-launch that rocked softly, softly on 
the tide setting outward from the many golden 
plages of that Breton sea-side. The plages were 
at this hour deserted; their cosmopolitan crowds 
of frocks, bathing-suits and sand-building children 
withdrawn to the crescents of toyish French villas. 
Taller and narrower were these than any English 
sea-side houses; lighter, in their stone-greys and 
sand-colours and rough-cast; keyed at their angles 
with red-brick, shuttered in green and cream, built 
for coolness and summer-shade. . . . 

But Archie Laverock wanted no shade; give him 
the full midday sun in which to bask upon the 
bosom of the waters a couple of hundred yards out 
in the little cove. He was bare-headed and deeply 
sunburnt from some days of this basking and bath- 
ing; the gohl-and -bronze of him showing up all the 
more intensely from the whiteness of his attire — 


191 


192 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


white sweater with Byron collar rolling away from 
his throat, old white flannel bags, white socks and 
the kind of white canvas shoes that were still to be 
bought for a few francs at a corner shop in St. 
Enogat. These shoes were stretched out a few 
inches above the level of his eyes; as he lounged, 
his back was to the shore, but in any case he had 
sunk down, luxuriously, into such a position that 
he could see nothing of his surroundings but a sun- 
baked bit of white-painted wood and for the rest 
that stretch of unclouded illimitable blue above 
the waters. He saw what one sees when lying on 
one’s back in the sea, and staring upwards. . . . 
Blue . . - blue. . . .Now there slid slowly across 
it the white translucent wings of a planing gull; 
now there glided past a triangle of the sail of a 
bisquine. Archie’s half-shut eyes may have taken 
these details in ; his mind realized nothing but the 
bliss of utter idleness, the stillness, brightness, 
warmth in which his body steeped and steeped itself. 
Inland, the cigales chirped among the clover that 
bordered the cliff -path; lizards abandoned them- 
selves to immobile bien-etre upon the hot sea-wall ; 
sulphur-yellow butterflies flattened their wings to 
the fervent cushions of thyme and lay vibrant, ec- 
static. How akin to those creatures was the young 
man at full length in the boat on the peacock-col- 
oured bay, letting sunshine and sea-air percolate 
to his innermost fibre! He was as little touched 
as were those other happy creatures of the day, by 
any thought of yesterday, by any thought of to-mor- 
row — in short, by any thought. Feelings, hardly 
to be dignified by the names of “ thought,” did drift 
idly through his mind even as the plaintive cry of 


HE MEETS THE GIRLS 


193 


the gulls drifted to his ears through the simmering 
haze of hedonistic, after-dejeuner torpor: 

How jolly all this was . . . Jolly place . . . 

Ripping weather . . . Nothing to bother 

about . . . 

Do as he liked for days yet . . . Nobody to worry 
him . . . 

Best of all, and Heaven be thanked for this 
crowning blessing ! no girls. . . . 

Just peace, perfect peace, with one other man, 
and the boat. . . . 

What luck that the blessed boat had turned out 
to belong to dear old “ Stick-It’ s ” people ! 

Wonderful, finding dear old Stick-It over here 
in France, in Dinard. After imagining that he 
“ went out ” in ’17 . . . Priceless old Stick-It wear- 
ing the most disreputable mufti ever seen, and his 
hair bristling over his coat-collar, sitting there as 
alive as anything in the cafe with a vermouth sec in 
front of him, and suddenly singing out, “Hel/o? 
Isn’t it Archie? But weren’t you dead?” 

Decent of him to insist upon Archie’s staying 
here to keep him company with the boat until the 
rest of the family came over. 

A dear chap, altogether, old Stick-It (mused 
Archie drowsily). 

A pal ; a man-pal, with all that means. Loyalty. 
Understanding. Being able to rely upon him in a 
tight corner. Or, what’s just as necessary, being 
able to rely upon him anyhow. No jealousy. No 
pettiness. No saying one thing and meaning an- 
other. No fuss. Just being friends. After all, 
nothing could beat it — with a man. 

. With a girl now — Well, of course, it was hardly 


194 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


news that you practically couldn’t be friends. 
Wasn’t that a stock joke? You started. Then — 
Either she wanted more or . . . you wanted more. ; 
Heaven knew why. It wasn’t worth having when 
you got it. 

Ages ago, some woman had once told him that 
to expect a sweetheart and a companion in one man 
was to expect him to row for Oxford and Cam- 
bridge in the same Boat-race — and that, to her, a 
man was but a poor “ companion ” anyway. . . . 
Heaven knew women were no “ companions ” to a 
man. Always wanting something different. Ana- 
lysing what they felt about you; what you ought 
to feel about them, what you did, what you didn’t — 
ad infinitum. Women . . .! Bah! Always talk, 
talk, talk. How different from men ! 

How awfully different from dear old Stick-It and 
his good old terse grunts! None of these hair- 
splittings, these wranglings over “ abstract ” ques- 
tions with him. Just “ Remember that dinner with 
their C.O.f By Jove, ha, ha/’ and “ I wonder what 
became of the sergeant-major f” and “ Ever hear 
of ” and so on. And then overhauling the en- 

gines (and that) together. And what about another 
vermouth (and all that) and going over to see what 
the links at St. Briac were like (and all that) ? 

Always with dear old Stick-It. Splendid. 

Who on earth wanted sparkling conversation on 
a holiday when you were out to enjov every second 
of it? 

( J ove, how blue . . . How warm . . . ) 

Who in his senses wanted girls about? How 
much jollier a whole heavenly holiday without 
one of ’em getting her nose in to spoil it at all. An 


HE MEETS THE GIRLS 195 

ideal holiday on your own with one jolly good man- 
pal. 

Old Stick-It (impossible ever to think of him by 
anything but his Army nick-name) said he’d be 
down at the jetty by a quarter to two. . . . 

Oceans of time. . . . 

How topping, for a change, this lazy life. . . . 
Not entirely lazy though; plenty to do, with the 
little Dulcie to themselves. . . . 

He — the Rover — was as attached to the little 
Dulcie as if he'd known all about her from baby- 
hood instead of only having had her to handle 
for the last ten days. (The Dulcie, of course, being 
the launch that lulled his mood with the gentlest 
rock, rocking as of a cradle. . . . ) 

The ripping little Dulcie, mused Archie, nodding. 
Dear old Stick — 

His light tide-rocked doze lasted for perhaps 
three minutes ; he slipped out of it as he’d slipped 
in, taking up his desultory musing at another 
point. 

Girls and his resolution. Yes; he’d made a sort 
of New Year resolution, only at the beginning of 
July. You could put it crudely into the two words 
“No girls ” . . . There was, however, more in it 
than just that. It meant, for once, Archie Lave- 
rock on the side of common-sense and what was 
best for him. And for others! Love . . .? Not 
again, thanks. Evidently not in his make-up. His 
character was to — to — people would say “ philan- 
der.” But deep in his heart Archie Laverock (like 
many another Rover) cherished the conviction that 
he ivas not hy nature a philanderer. Polyga- 
mous . . . Ugly word! Yet (people might ask) 


196 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


where’s the difference between a man who frankly 
is like that — and yourself? 

People wouldn’t understand how badly he 
needed something he’d never found. There wasn’t 
such a thing. . . . Girls thought you meant them . 
Got hurt . . . Little Lucy Joy! . . . Mauve . . . 
The other affairs, of summers before this. 

Cut the whole proposition ! Cut girls right out ; 
don’t worry to wonder what they were like, don’t 
try to make friends, don’t look at ’em. . . . 

Not even a sacrifice to young Laverock in his 
present mood of understanding only those stories 
about sailor-men whose ship was their sole sweet- 
heart (and be blowed to those other tales about 
Every Port!). 

Anybody (thought Archie with his hand on the 
hot tiller) would make a pet of the little Dulcie. 
Pretty, pretty she was with her speckless velour 
paint, her brasses flashing brighter than the new- 
est wedding-ring, and her slender graceful lines! 
When all was said, a boat was not only the prettiest 
thing man’s hand ever made, but the shapeliest 
that man’s eye ever saw. Where (out of the whole 
sex that this young man had just renounced with 
all its works), where was the girl whose shape 
could show a line to compare with . . . 

Here was that drowsing sun-baked reverie of 
Archie Laverock, cut most abruptly short. 

It was cut short first of all by a dipping of the 
boat under him. Then by a fumbling or knocking 
on the outside of it. Any unusual sound when 
you’re in a boat brings a man to his feet at once. 
Rut even before young Laverock could get to his 


HE MEETS THE GIRLS 19T 

feet there appeared over the funnel a wet hand — 
how brown, how small ! 

“ Monsieur ! ” gasped a feminine voice. 

The next second Archie Laverock was looking 
down at the girl swimmer who was clinging to 
the piece of sennet that served as fender to the 
Dulcie’s counter,. From under a poppy-red bath- 
ing cap there looked up a pair of very frightened 
eyes. She was clinging tightly to the rope-braiding 
in a vain effort to get into the boat. Through the 
jade water her limbs disappeared under the 
counter, and with each of her struggles the boat 
rocked. She was biting her lips. . . . 

Archie, all action at once, exclaimed, “ Half a 
moment! don’t tire yourself! Get your arms well 
over mine and keep a good hold when I tell you. 
Now ” 

And one rail of the Dulcie tipped up, the other 
down, as, with a heave, he got the girl into the 
boat. The boat rocked and righted again as a 
dripping, panting sea-nymph sank down on to the 
warm boards where a few moments ago the Re- 
nouncer of Girls had lain meditating. . . . 

With a muttered “good Lord ” he disap- 

peared into the cuddy, coming out again with a 
bundle of clean cotton-waste in his hands. 

“ Hadn’t you better give yourself a dry -off with 
that? ” he suggested quickly, not stopping to con- 
sider that this damsel who’d hailed him in French 
might not understand what he said. “ I'm sorry 
it’s the only thing we seem to have got. And do 
put my coat on, won’t you?” he had his old Nor- 
folk across his arm. “ Let me give you a lift 


108 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


But as lie lield out the coat, the girl — she might, 
from her build at first sight, have been either fif- 
teen or twenty-five — gave a small laugh. The 
fright had now left her eyes ; eyes of clear brown, 
well fringed with dark lashes that were not curly 
but long (he noticed), and had been pointed into 
tiny clusters by the sea-water, giving an added 
piquancy to her eyes . . . yes, they were nearer 
twenty-five than fifteen, he noticed swiftly. The 
voice in which she now spoke had an intonation 
of neither France nor England. 

“ You’re English. Isn’t that a mercy! ” ex- 
claimed the fair American girl, still panting, but 
recovering her poise with every quick syllable.; 
“ To explain and thank you politely ” — pant, 
pant — “ for saving my life, in fluent French, at a 
moment when I was all out of breath and rattled ” 
— pant — “ would be a thing of which I was literally 
not ” — emphasis here and tiny characteristic 
pause — “ capable ! I am terribly obliged to you, 
in English. . . . No, I am not going to wet your 
coat. I’ll be dry here in ten seconds ” 

“ Cramp, was it? ” Archie questioned her. 
Cramp is a thing that can fall upon the most ath- 
letic, and this nymph’s graceful silhouette pro- 
claimed her for a typical, out-door physically- 
cultured Modern. “ No? . . . Just got out further 
than you meant. . . . Tide running out, too. I 
say, you ought to be careful ! ” he added, severely. 

There stirred in him the universal masculine 
Will-to-Scold-the-Woman. Particularly the woman- 
decorative. Now decorative this girl undeniably 
was from the shape of her head under the cap that 


HE MEETS THE GIRLS 


199 


hid all her hair down to her faultless bare toes. 
From an aesthetic point of view, she completed ther 
look of the launch. Graceful lines ( of that launch ) , 
ivory paint, and blue sea-scape were so well set-ofl! 
by the scarlet-and-black-and-peachy-tan of her rest- 
ing quivering figure; so much more in the picture 
actually, than old Stick-It and his boots! 

So young Laverock scolded : “ With that awfully 
strong tide here, drifting all over the shop! Cur- 
rents and things! Look at these rocks! It’s not 
fit for anyone to swim out, except when the tide’s 
coming in. And aren’t you cold? ” 

She laughed again, though her breast still flut- 
tered. “ Cold? Couldn’t you toast bread on this 
cunning little deck, just in the sun? ” 

“ Sure you aren’t chilled, though, by the re-ac- 
tion? Let me feel your hand.” 

He took for a moment the cool (but not cold)j 
small hand that was nearest to him. As he did so, 
the sun flashed on something as bright as the 
Dulcie’s brass-work — a wedding-ring. 

Married,, was she? 

M’m . . . She didn’t look it. 

He went on just as severely as if she had been the 
mere girl for whom he’d taken her. “ By Jove, I 
hope you won’t chance it again. Lucky I was here. 
I)o you know you might have been carried right 
out and away? ” 

“ Maybe it was silly of me,” she admitted frankly 
with a deeper breath, “ but there’s one thing I 
couldn’t endure and that was to have the United 
Kingdom and Sweden and Denmark hear me say 
there was something I could do and then for me 


200 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


to not do it! I just had to swim out as far as 
this motor-boat to show them ! ” 

“ Alone? ” questioned the rebuker. “ Haven’t 
you anyone belonging to you who ” 

“Well, I couldn’t take Marcus, in along. Mar- 
cus always has to go to sleep for two hours after 
his dejeuner ” 

“ Oh, does he? ” took up the young man (think- 
ing disgustedly, “ that kind of a husband, is he ! ”) . 

“ Why, yes, he’s only four years old,” explained 
the American, now perfectly composed, “ and that 
was all part of it: some of the others imagining 
that to be the mother of a son and have that young 
growing creature around was any handicap. . . . 
I had to show them ! I’ll have to ask you to take 
me back to them ” 

“ Of course; which is your plage?” 

She pointed to a crescent of golden beach on 
wdiich there was now clustering a posy of vividly- 
coloured peignoirs and caps. Billowing sails of 
black-and-white-striped stuff, of dahlia-red, of 
sunshine-yellow floated about black-sheathed bodies 
and limbs of tan or ivory . . . half a dozen other 
girls had run up, were gesticulating, moving, to 
the edge of the sea. 

“ Is that your party? ” asked young Laverock. 
“ Right.” 

A purr and a tremor ran through the Duleie as 
he started her engines. The green-gleaming V of 
the bow-wave rose along her polished sides, and the 
launch leapt forward as if in haste to be rid of this 
other feminine creature who was aboard and whose 
face lighted up yet more vividly at the quick mo- 
tion. 


HE MEETS THE GIRLS 201 

“You like going fast.” Archie smiled, with a 
tiny pause that she might fill in if she chose. 

She said, “ Yes. And— I am Mrs. Otis Wilmot.” 
“ My name's Laverock.” The Rover added, 
“Where are you staying; at the Michelet?” Not 
that he wanted to know ! What did it matter where 
she was staying? But wasn’t it more polite to as- 
sume some interest? 

She, as they whizzed shorewards, told him the 
real name of the villa — adding, “ We call it i Ker 
Babel ’ ! ” and the road from which it stood back. 

“ That place — oh, yes ! I know it. There are a 
lot of you there, aren’t there? I suppose those are 
the Swedes and Danes and English you were talk- 
ing about? ” 

“ Yes; we’re all together. We have lots of fun. 
I am the second mother to the girls there because 

I’m the only married one of the bunch ■” 

“ Oh, are you? ” 

“ even if I am a widow ! ” 

“Oh! Are you?” said young Laverock. He 
could not have explained why he exclaimed “ Oh ! ” 
in that tone of added interest. 

“ We,” she went on, “ have a perfectly lovely 
time — look, look, there are all the girls wading 
in now to meet us and practise artificial respira- 
tion on the apparently drowned, I guess ” 

She waved towards the group at the sea’s edge, 
now mirrored in circling swirls of colour. Lovely, 
every movement of her bare, peach-tanned arm! 
From an aesthetic point of view she marked the 
centre of interest in an exquisite bit of French 
coast scenery. From a purely aesthetic point of 
view (young Laverock clung to this phrase as de- 


202 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


terminedly as she had clung to that rope!) it 
seemed such a pity that this sea-nymph had to go 
ashore at all. 

But now they were within hail of that shoal of 
other sirens, wading out. One of them, in an un- 
mistakably English voice, called out anxiously, 
“ Are you all right, Genevieve? ” 

It was Archie who took it upon himself to call 
back, “ She’s perfectly all right ! ” 

Then came a soft commotion of splashing and 
“ hurrays ” and “ Hurry up in ” ’s from the cluster ; 
also, a dropping fire of “ Thank you ! Thank you 
so much ! ” aimed at Archie Laverock, who smiled 
in a general way from one to another of the crowd- 
ing, stranger-girl faces. 

At that moment he wouldn’t have known any of 
them again — Except the girl who had waded out 
furthest towards the boat. 

She, this “ First Siren (as she might be named 
in the “ cast ” of this scene) , was really rather won- 
derful-looking, he noticed in the few seconds as she 
waded forward. Immensely tall for a woman, she 
could have topped the tall Rover himself, he fan- 
cied ; and how fair ! What marble-w r hite and mus- 
cular upper arms she swung above the water! 
Un-self-conscious and grave, she gazed towards the 
young man in the launch with great eyes, blue as 
the sea in which she stood ; backed by the flawless 
sky, by the golden sand and the white cupolas be- 
hind her, she might have been a poster to advertise 
the place (“casino et bains cle mer •’•’). An arrest- 
ing girl ! from, of course, the aesthetic point of view. 

The Rover, slowing down, said to his passenger, 


HE MEETS THE GIRLS 203 

“ May I call some time later in the afternoon to 
see if you’re quite all right? ” 

He knew ; hadn’t he even said she was perfectly 
all right? But didn’t politeness demand that he 
should call to inquire after her? 

“ Surely,” agreed this Genevieve. “ I’ll be glad 
to pour you a cup of tea and have you meet the 
family ! ” 

“Thanks so much. Afraid I can’t run you up 
right in here; think you can manage if I take you 
just under the point there? ” 

“Watch!” she retorted, blithely. She rose to 
those little bare feet. Laverock shut off the engine, 
put the helm over. The jade V of wave subsided 
along the Dulcie’s side. 

“ Ready ! ” cried the American beauty. “ Au 
revoir! ” 

With a clean plunge over the side she shot like 
a milky-green arrow through the depths, came up, 
turned a poppy head to laugh back at him, and was 
claimed by the splashing, questioning crowd of her 
mates. 

Archie Laverock just heard her call, “ Now, then, 

Selma ” something or other, to that very tall 

girl. . . . 

(Selma? . . . sounded Scandinavian; those 

brilliant blue eyes, too . . . ) 

Ankle-deep in the scallops of foam that caught 
at them, retired, and caught at them again, the 
girls presently turned once more to wave in friend- 
ly-wise to the young man in that boat, bobbing on 
the tide. He waved back. . . . 

Until at last there reached him, repeated bull- 


204 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


throated hails of, “Hi, Archie! Archie!” he wa£ 
not even aware that the substantial, the ragamuffin 
form of Dear Old Stick-It had been signalling to 
him for some time from the cliff-top. 

The Arrant Rover had been watching all those 
girls. 

Aesthetically, of course. 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 


THE HOUSE OP MANY VOICES 

“Confusion of tongues ” 

— Scriptures. 

LD Stick-It, having heard Archie Laverock’s 



account of the sea-nymph episode and of the 


v — r invitation, uttered, with his habitual terse- 
ness, two words: 

“ Well, good-bye — eee! ” 

“ Good-bye? What are you talking about? 
You don’t think I’m going to look up those ladies 
without you, do you?” retorted the Rover. “ My 
dear chap, I only said I’d go because I thought 
you’d like it ! ” 

At this a species of blank, ineffable grin spread 
itself over the features of the other man, but before 
he could speak Laverock hastened on. 

“ yes, I thought you’d rather like it by way 

of a change. You don’t know anybody here, do you? 
Rather jolly for you to have some pleasant girls to 
talk to, I thought. I expect they all dance and 
play tennis and that sort of thing. . . . For Heav* 
en’s sake get on some white shoes, man. You can’t 

go paying calls in those tramp’s boots of yours ” 

“ Haven’t got any white shoes.” 
u Then buy some,” ordered Archie. a Buy some. 
Not just those French jute-soled things for the 
sands, either. Consider the first impression you’ve 
got to make on those girls. Most important* A3 


205 


206 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


decent pair of English-made white shoes; Fll take 
yon to the shop where you can get ’em. Come 
along.” 

The white shoes bought, it was, “ And there’s 
just time for you to get a proper hair-cut, Stick-It, 
and a shave; come on, quite a good shop in that 
street opposite the Casino.” 
u I have shaved.” 

“ Have to shave twice,” decreed young Laverock, 
u when you’re out all day like this. First thing 
women look at in a man is how he’s shaved and if 
he’s had his hair properly brushed. You’ve no idea 

;what a difference it makes to them ” 

Old Stick-It grunted, “ Who cares? ” 

“ You do. Believe me,” retorted the Rover, grab- 
bing his friend’s arm to steer him towards the 
biggest oval white sign of “ Coiffeur ” that swung 
across the street. “ You’re going to turn over a 
new leaf and have the dickens of a good time; no 
use thinking you can, though, if you won’t hu- 
manize your turn-out. I suppose I shall have to 
lend you a tie that is a tie. Can’t buy those over 

here. You put yourself into my ’ands, Sir ” 

Stick-It resignedly complied. He was turned out 
for once with at least as much care as the Arrant 
Rover bestowed upon his own daily grooming. Two 
hours from the time when the invitation was issued 
saw Old Stick-It accompanying young Laverock 
upon this enterprise of getting to know this little 
crowd of nice girls. . . . Oh, not for Archie ! He 
would never have bothered about it for himself. 
Perfectly happy as he was. Still! Pity not to 
follow this up, for the sake of Old Stick-It. And, 
besides, Stick-It’s mother and sisters were coming 


THE HOUSE OF MANY VOICES 20T 


on here presently for their holiday. They’d like 
to meet a few nice girls here. Everybody likes to 
meet nice, new girls. . . . 

In that town of toyish abodes (size Packing-case, 
style Chateau) quite half the villas had names 
beginning with “ Ker ” which is Breton for 
u house.” Thus everywhere there looked out, from 
the railings tangled in grape-vine and rambler- 
roses, wooden signs gilded with the inscriptions 
“Ker Eugenie ” “Ker Gaby” or “Ker Dick” 
But the villa to which the young American widow 
had directed Laverock bore a conventionally usual 
French name: 

“Mon Repos ” . * . 

Colourless enough, had it not been so deliciously, 
so buoyantly inappropriate to the place! Repose 
was its very last characteristic. Movement, gay 
and restless, appeared even through the approach; 
a tall iron gate-way of scroll-work, intricate and 
delicate, painted pearl-grey and wreathed in the 
leafage, and the lovely purple-and-crimson-and- 
white trumpets of morning-glory convolvulus. 
Through this frame showed a dazzle pattern of 
breeze-blown colour. . . . 

Up from the gateway and garlanded railings 
there led a flight of shallow stone-steps ; their sides 
completely hidden in riotous overgrowth. For be- 
side every fourth step there were set immense cor- 
nucopia vases of lapis-lazuli-blue faience, out of 
which cascaded a torreftt of the gaudiest flowers 
that blow. Pink ivy -leafed geraniums; sheaves of 
staring marguerites; masses of sulphur-yellow cal- 


208 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


ceolaria ; eschaltzias ; zinnias ; petunias in tlie more 
vivid of even the petunia shades ; begonias of blood- 
red, of shrieking scarlet and of blazing orange; 
lobelias of half-a-dozen fervent blues. Between the 
vases, crowded bush after bush of hydrangea in 
full bloom. Their globes of creamy-green and of 
faint-pink shading to mauve sounded a note of 
cooler colour, but were still drenched in warmth by 
those floods of joyous golden sunshine of France 
that poured down, through and upon the whole gay 
dappled cretonne. Beyond it on each side was a 
slant of emerald lawn, trimmed with a border of 
striped, deck-chair awnings. Beyond again were 
breeze-tossed poplars, curtseying like pavane- 
dancers this way and that, and showing now the 
silver-grey undersides, now the dim-green of their 
leafy robes. They flanked the house. 

The house itself was tall and white as one of the 
many demi-towers used for sailing-marks along 
that coast. Across pale facade and light-green 
shutters rippled a Japanese pattern of cobalt 
shadows; the open windows seemed to promise 
caverns of cool darkness inside. Out of the middle 
wdndow floated proudly a big tri-colour French 
flag. Smaller flags fluttered from the other win- 
dows; Union Jack, Stars and Stripes, the scarlet- 
and-white of Denmark, Sweden’s red, blue and 
gold, even a Red Dragon sweeping across its 
green-and-white ground; what wasn’t bunting w r as 
bathing-costumes ; scarlet, striped, and black 
(hanging out to dry over the warm sills and pinned 
down by pairs of white canvas sandalettes in va- 
rious small sizes) and w r hat wasn’t bathing cos- 


THE HOUSE OF MANY VOICES 209 


turnes was Chinese lanterns, gay even in daylight 
as they dangled and swung! 

Sound, too, as well as colour, permeated that 
place. From within on the lower story poured the 
strains of Rachmaninoff’s Prelude drawn with no 
uncertain touch from a remarkably tine piano ; this 
mingled with the mosquito-like music of a mandolin 
practised on the next-door balcony, while some- 
where else an unlocated gramophone discoursed 
(prestissimo!) the tune of “ I’m forever ’blowing 
bubbles! ” and all the time a volume of treble chat- 
ter from the top of the garden seemed to thread 
the diaper of other sound with many voices, all 
raised at once in some animated discussion. . . . 

At the gate, young Laverock thought, “ No won- 
der she said they called it i Ker Babel’! Jove, 
what a merry din. . . . What does this show remind 
me of? I know. It’s like being at the Joys’, only 
more so. . . .” 

He shook off the sudden memory -picture of that 
Blue Bungalow and of those spring-flowers that 
were only less bright than those of midsummers; 
and turned to the dogged friend at his elbow. 

“ Pull yourself together, Stick. Prepare to 

amuse these new friends of yours ” 

“ Huh,” from Stick-It. “Mine?” 

“ Yes, yours. Don’t you mess up your chances. 
Be your sparkling young self. Think of the trouble 

I’m taking to get you off ” 

“ Hadn’t you better ring that bell again? ” 

“ They don’t seem to hear ; no wonder, through 
all this noise,” said Archie Laverock, “ look here, 
we’ll just march up in ” 


210 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


He led the way up that hanging-garden of steps. 
From above the dancing pattern of branches and 
leaf-shapes was flung across his newly-cleaned flan- 
nels as he moved towards the slant of lawn. Sud- 
denly both he and Stick-It drew up at the sight of 
something odd on the grass. Three or four long- 
eared Belgian hares sat about, in various uncon- 
cerned attitudes under the poplars. A couple of 
yards away from them a black-and-white fox-terrier 
stood staring at the hares. . . . He didn’t move. 
He didn’t move ! . . . 

It was perhaps three seconds before the visitors 
realized that all the animals were of painted com- 
position; then both men joined in the little burst 
of laughter that came from the group beside the 
striped canvas chairs, further ahead. . . . 

“ There! Now! If somebody else hasn’t been 
fooled by this Zoological Gardens of ours ! ” ex- 
claimed a voice that Archie knew. “ How do you 
do again, Mr. Laverock ! ” 

He had thought it would be difficult to recognize 
which of these varied tennis jumper-frocks repre- 
sented which, of girls he had only seen as slender, 
black-sheathed spars to their billowing sails of 
peignoir, but here she came, the pretty widow ; dis- 
engaging herself from a parterre of other summery- 
dresses. He now thought he would have spotted, 
anywhere, the clear brown eyes of the stranger 
now so charmingly dressed in orchid-coloured or- 
gandie, with long-vamped American buck-skin 
pumps on her feet. He saw for the first time the 
hair that, in the water, had been hidden by her 
poppy-cap. Hair . . . not black, that sounds dead. 
Her soft, bobbed curls were “ alive ” enough as they 


THE HOUSE OF MANY VOICES 211 


sprang from that narrow white parting of hers, 
then twisted, and rolled and wreathed her small 
head with the decorative clusterings as well as the 
colour of a bunch of darkest grapes. Archie, notic- 
ing these details even as he came up hat in hand, 
told himself that he had always liked hair “ with 
a Rick in it.” That same hair was “ repeated ” on 
the tiny boy in a white linen tunic who moved 
solemnly beside the orchid-coloured skirt. 

u Shake hands, Marcus, with the gentleman who 
brought your mamma safe home in his launch ! ” 

The child lifted his small face ; large-eyed, 
dreamy, yet brightly scrutinizing. A smile hovered, 
but did not settle, as he put out his minute, sepia- 
tanned paw. . . . His mother whisked round ; dis- 
may changing her piquant face. 

“ Girls,” she cried. “ I guess I’ll have to send 
you off without me ! Which of you’ll undertake to 
see that Marcus doesn’t make himself sick with 
candy? I can’t come along. I made a date for 
Mr. Laverock to call here this afternoon ” — here 
she turned back to the visitor, while dismay strug- 
gled with laughter, “ and then I — I — Would you 
believe it? I forgot I’d said for him to come to-day. 
I forgot all about it.” 

Now here was a fresh experience for Archie Lave- 
rock, the Arrant Rover. Forgotten? It was the 
first time that this thing had ever happened to him 
in all his dealings with The Sex. Sometimes a girl 
had been prevented by circumstances from meeting 
him after she’d promised ; or a girl had considered 
that for one reason or another she had better not 
come as he asked. But never, never had any girl 
forgotten the appointment. . . . Well! One did 


212 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


hear that American women were different from 
ours, both in their feelings towards and their treat- 
ment of their mankind. . . . 

With perfect sweetness this young man now 
laughed and responded, “ Quite natural, I’m sure. 
Such a lot to do here, isn’t there? Of course I — 
we never meant for a moment to keep you in. We 
only thought we” — his glance included Stick-It, 
standing stolidly there in those new shoes — “ would 
just look in to ask after you. So glad you’re quite 
all right ” 

“But! You must think I’m the ungratefulest 
wretch ! ” she protested. “ After this morning ! 
All I remembered was that it w r as to-day I prom- 
ised this boy of mine,” a fond smile, downwards, 
“ that we’d take him over to St. Malo in the 
afternoon ! ” 

Quickly, but not too quickly, Archie Laverock 
suggested, “ But couldn’t I — mightn’t we be al- 
lowed to come with you? ” 

“ Surely ! ” cordially. “ If you’d care for that ! 
We were just going to start. Five minutes later and 
you’d have missed us. Come along, you and your 

friend. Come along, girls ” to that array of 

indistinguishable frocks, “Where’s my hat?” she 
hurriedly crammed a big white Panama on to the 
grape like curls. “ We’ll have to make the intro- 
ductions on the way down to the boat ” 

Here Stick-It opened his lips for the first time. 

“ I’ve got a boat. I’ll run you over on the Dulcie. 
She takes five.” 

“ Why, isn’t that fine ! Only, there are lots more 
than five of us! We’ll have to split up, I guess, 


THE HOUSE OF MANY VOICES 213 


into parties. The vedette isn’t going to wait for 
us,” the rapid American speech streamed on, “ so 
you run along first, Selma ! ” — this to that Scan- 
dinavian goddess, now frocked in dim-blue, casqued 
in golden braids — “and May and Eileen and you 
two Macdonalds and Gwen — Wait, Mr. Laverock! 
I want to have you meet the adopted Mamma of 
the party ” 

Archie put in, “I thought you w T ere that? ” 

“Yes; but the other, the Mamma-in-chief. She 
isn’t coming out on this trip. Mamma ! ” she called 
in the direction of the cavern-entrance windows. 
“ Mamma ! Visitors, Mamma ! ” 

The strains of that wondrous Prelude ceased ab- 
ruptly. Slowly there emerged from the villa a 
figure slightly more awe-inspiring than that of the 
others in this rose-bud garden of girls. “ Mamma ” 
was massively fifty-five or more. Her head resem- 
bled that of the bust of Beethoven. Shocks of 
thick grey hair were cropped at her nape, swept 
back from her broad low forehead, and clamped at 
her temples by clips of hand-wrought silver and 
uncut turquoise. Her draperies were of heavy 
white serge, Bom an in effect ; and she wore sandals 
over bare feet that were somewhat large, but 
straight-toed and soignes as those of the shapely 
American herself. 

“Mamma, this is that English gentleman Mr, 
Laverock that w T e’ve all told you about already, 
I guess. And his friend. — This is Madame ” 

— some outlandish-sounding name that neither 
of the young Englishmen caught; a foreigner, evi- 
dently; an artist, a woman of character*, by the 


214 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


deep-set granite-grey eyes that gazed so straight 
into the faces of the visitors, to whom she bowed 
ceremoniously and in silence. 

Young Laverock decided to himself that the 
chaperon of this variegated party had not much 
English. The young American widow seemed giv- 
ing herself pains to speak slowly and distinctly as 
she said Good-bye to the older lady, and announced 
that they would all be home, probably, a little late 
for supper. “ Mamma’s ” only reply was another 
dignified inclination of the Beethoven-esque head 
above the Roman draperies. 

Then the girlish mother fluttered down the 
blossom-bordered steps, seeming a moving flower 
amongst the others ; her tiny boy’s white tunic was 
pressed close as a butterfly to her skirt. The two 
young men followed together. 

But already at the gate, little Marcus Wilmot 
turned his face up towards Mr. Laverock, to whom 
he had taken one of these child’s-fancies that can- 
not be bought nor besought. Confidingly he slipped 
one small paw into the young man’s long fingers, 
the other into his mother’s hand, and so trotted 
along between them, leaving a that other gentle- 
man ” (Stick-It) to join the girls hastening down 
the cobbled streets to the jetty. 


On the deserted lawn of Mon Repos , amongst 
those imitation Belgian hares, the Mamma-in-chief 
stood for a moment still as a monument to the mem- 
ory of chaperonage, gazing after the party. 

She murmured to herself a comment that was 
hardly fair to, but that would have been lost upon, 


THE HOUSE OF MANY VOICES 215 


the Rover — who did not understand Danish. In 
that language she remarked grimly — 

“ There goes a young man who believes that in 
three minutes he could make love to any woman he 
chose.” 

A gleam of humour shot into those deep-set eyes 
of hers as she added, “ The amusing part of it is 
that he could!” 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 


THE CHILD-LEAD 

“ Better than all the ballads 
That ever were sung or said! 

For ye are the living poems 
And all the rest are dead.” 

— Longfellow (on Children). 

O F the whole party that fluttered and chat- 
tered their way down to the sloping stone- 
wharf of the Dinard-St. Malo ferry, the 
person in whom Archie Laverock took an interest 
was — not one of the girls, but just that four-year- 
old American boy. 

For there is no compliment on earth so beguiling, 
so potent as the preference shown by a child. To 
that flattery even women yield. Men are helpless 
before it. 

Young Laverock watched this little boy who had 
taken his hand. The little boy (face darkened by 
dreams, eyes lightened by sunshine-on-waters) 
watched the movements of the ferry-men at the 
quay-side edge. Turning his small face up, he 
asked gravely, “What are they doing? ” 

Some grown-ups complain that they don’t know 
“ how to talk ” to small boys. Without consider- 
ing this problem, young Laverock had its solution. 
He cut out any idea of special technique and an- 
swered the boy of four as simply as he would have 
spoken to a man of four-and-twenty. 

“ They are going to haul the wooden landing 
216 


THE CHILD-LEAD 217 

stage round by those ropes,” he explained, “ so that 
we can get on to the boat.” 

Fascinated, little Marcus murmured, “ Yes ...” 
and, still with his hand in Archie’s, watched the 
proceedings. For him at that moment, even his 
mother had ceased to exist, as Woman does cease 
to exist for Man under the spell of Things. De- 
lighted, he presently trotted on to the landing stage, 
on to the little steam ferry-boat with the steersman 
at the top of her ladder; his child’s eyes were all 
agog with questions that he presently turned upon 
the one other male of the party. 

“ Say ! What’s that big, kind o’ hole down there 
on the boat? 

“ That’s what they call the well ” 

“ Water in it? ” 

“ No ; it’s where they keep the motors ; the en- 
gines, you know.” 

“ Yes. Are they in that box? . . . Are they go- 
ing to open it? I guess they’re opening it right 
now . . . look, look ! ” full of excitement the child 
tugged at Archie’s hand, pulling him along to peer 
in as the ferry-man lifted the lid. . . . 

It was nothing to either of this couple that the 
seats and the deck of that little vedette were gay 
with summer-frocks, and that the treble talk 
rippled on unceasingly as the wake behind the boat 
that glided through the jade-water. 

“ Why,” demanded Marcus anon, staring into the 
depths, “ is the water green ? Say, why is the water 
so green where we’re swimming along through it 
and ’way over there it’s blue? Why? ” 

“ Now, Marcus Otis Wilmot, will you stop ask- 
ing questions ! ” protested the young mother 


218 THE ARRANT ROVER 

laughingly. “ I guess Mr. Laverock will bitterly 
regret he ever suggested coming on this trip with 
us ! ” 

The unheeding Marcus pointed a stumpy fore- 
finger towards the sliding shore-scape. “ Say, Mr. 
Lav-er-rock, what’s that place over there with all 
those forests? ” 

“ That? La Vivomte.” 

“ And what’s that other place on the sea-shore? ” 

“ That is St. Servan.” 

“ Yes. . . . Oh ! Say ! Where’s that boat going 
to with all those folks?” 

“ They are going to land w T here we put off, Mar- 
cus. It’s the other ferry-boat going to Dinard.” 

“ When Momma and I crossed over from N’York, 
w T e came in a liner. Have you ever seen a liner? 
It was lots and lots bigger than this; most forty- 
thousand milliond times bigger, I guess. . . . ’N 
where are we going to land now, Mr. Lav-er-rock? ” 

Archie pointed, across rail and water, towards 
that long island of St. Malo, broadly girdled by 
its stone ramparts, jagged with roofs of buildings 
set upon varying heights, and dominated by the 
spire of its Cathedral, tall, and pale, and crock- 
et-ted like a stripped kail-stalk. 

“ At low tide we should land there, just about 
where I am pointing, and walk up the rock-path 
to the Quay. But, as it’s high tide, we shall land 
over there. Do you see? ” returned the young man, 
and anyone watching him as he looked down upon 
the small face raised to his would have noticed 
a change come into his rover’s eyes. 

For there stole through the consciousness of 
Archie Laverock at that moment a certain wistful 


THE CHILD-LEAD 


219 


longing which is supposed to be experienced only 
by the mothering sex. Not for the first time in 
his healthy young man's life, he found himself won* 
dering what it was like to have a little chap of 
one’s own. 

Kids, after all . . . Nothing quite like them ! 

A topping kid like this little Marcus Wil- 
mot. . . . When one was getting a bit old and stiff 
and off one’s game, he’d be coming on. 

Fancy coaching him how to hold his first-size 
bat, to throw his first fly ! 

Imagine his funny little voice piping up “My 
Governor says ”■ ! 

No wonder some of the married subalterns who’d 
been in the Regiment with Archie put on faces of 
such fatuous complacency when they uttered those 
so frequently recurring words “ that youngster of 
mine ...” With a curious subtle ache at his heart 
Archie remembered that he knew fellows of his own 
age who’d got two nippers already. . . . 

Lord! He was the right sort of man to hanker 
after the cares of a family*! He, Laverock, who 
for the last two years of (what we call) Peace had 
only just managed to keep himself ! 

Still . . . 

All very well for these Feminists to talk about 
how most women wouldn’t marry now-a-days at 
all, but that they wanted children. (Not the man! 
no ; the child that only he could give. ) That, con- 
sciously or not, was in the mind of the bride. 

But he, Laverock, fancied there might conceiv- 
ably be something of that in the attitude of the 
bridegroom. Men might be drawn (perhaps sub- 
consciously drawn) into Marriage by that same 


220 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


lure. (Not the woman! no; the child that only she 
could bear.) Perhaps that was why those old 
Greeks symbolized Love by a laughing, round- 
limbed, baby -boy? 

These musings were interrupted by the bustle of 
arrival at the Quay, and by the chatter of how the 
party were to divide. Some wanted to “ do ” the 
fortifications; some to visit the Cathedral; some 
to shop. 

Still the Rover was for the time being inseparable 
from the child, who stepped over the swinging 
chain of the ferry wall, then trotted at his side, 
away from all those skirts, under the deep shadow 
of the Ponte de Dinan. In the sunlight again he 
suddenly hung back outside the first shop of the 
hilly cobbled street ; an intriguing little shop with 
carved wooden things in its window. 

“ Say,” he murmured covetously, “ look at that 
little old man in a hat like Noah and his wife in 
a funny cap; what’s those for, Mr. Lav-er-rock? ” 

Archie turned smiling to young Mrs. Wilmot. : 
“You wouldn’t mind if I got him a little carved 
toy? ” 

Together the Rover and the child entered the 
dim, fascinating den, redolent of the all-pervading 
local smells — of fish, freshly ground coffee, warm 
charcoal, the sea — also of newly chipped wood and 
of the stain used to darken it. The young w r ood- 
carver (black-haired, blue-eyed, a typical Celt of 
either Brittany or Britain, wearing a small Van- 
dyke beard, a picturesque modelling-blouse and a 
Quartier Latin tie) displayed to Archie his quaint 
wares. Spoons and salad-servers and ladles had 


THE CHILD-LEAD 


221 


tlieir handles carved into the heads of Breton peas- 
ants; from the gas-bracket dangled a more grimly- 
conceived figure — “ Le Pendu reminder of dark 
days when France took a short w T ay with her Celtic 
rebels. The back of the shop gave glimpses of a 
cosy kitchen, of a housewife’s checked apron and 
neat chignon, of a toddling babe. 

The little American boy came out of that place 
hugging to his breast a wooden peasant in shovel- 
hat and baggy bragon-bras ; between whose lantern 
jaws one could crack hazel-nuts. Archie Laverock 
had a handful of the nuts in his pocket, and felt 
that he could be perfectly happy for the rest of the 
afternoon all alone with the kid and this toy. 

However, far aw r ay up the street, he caught sight 
of old Stick-It ? s broad back and of the pink-and- 
blue-and-cream-and-yellow gleam of those frocks. 
The narrow ascending street was full of touristy- 
looking people mingling with the sailors, the hand- 
carts, the aproned French market-women, the blue- 
uniformed soldiers of the town ; Archie could 
hardly pick out the girls of the Mon Repos party 
from the rest of the throng. 

“ Where did your mother get to, Marcus, d’you 
know? ” 

The stubby browm finger was again out- 
stretched. 

“ Momma went into that shop with lace all hang- 
ing; I saw her dress.” 

The tall figure and the tiny one paused outside a 
window dressed as it were with snow-mists and 
frost-crystals of lace. Through this they caught 
a shimmer of orchid-colour. 

“ There’s Momma, Mr. Lav-er-rock.” 


222 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


They entered; to find woven around young Mrs. 
Wilmot the web of rhetoric and flattery as spun by 
a French saleswoman. 

Squat, square of shoulder, elderly, stout, sallow, 
gowned in unrelieved black, this Latin woman had 
nothing but the Will-to-Charm to make her charm- 
ing. Yet she succeeded. Irresistible was her aura. 
Her voice, her hands allured. All her brunette face 
smiled — with the exception of her eyes; watchful, 
calculating, intently mindful of uttermost far- 
things that must be exacted to pay the debts of 
France, to help to staunch her country’s gaping 
wounds. Relentless ! say we of these French trad- 
ers; but who that knows can blame them? Here, 
for example, was a widow whose husband, sons, 
happiness, prosperity, and leisure had been reft 
from her together ; her living and that of her grow- 
ing grandchildren depended upon just these smiles, 
these coaxing gestures that she was training (like 
guns!) upon the customer. 

“ Regard, Mademoiselle, this filet here.” Im- 
memorial pose of Women with Lace; gesture as of 
a Fate letting twist from her shuttle the thread 
of all earthly bliss. “ Has one ever seen such a 
garniture ! For the skirt of a little robe of 
Summer ! ” 

“ Again I have for a flounce, more wide. Valen- 
ciennes. Ah ! ” Gesture of ecstasy. “ For a saut- 
de-lit ; but yes justly for the marriage-basket, the 
trousseau of Mademoiselle who can well wear the 
things so exquisite; for an older lady, no! for fea- 
tures less chiselled, no! for a figure less slim, less 
perfect, ah ! but no ! ” Gesture of horror. “ But, 
as the true bridal-veil for the beauty of Mademoi- 


THE CHILD-LEAD 223 

selle!” Gesture of adoring homage. Then, with a 
dramatic drop of the pitch, “One hundred and 
sixty-five francs only.” 

The pretty widow, her hack to the shop-entrance, 
and her eyes upon the filmy festoons, took up in 
some surprise, “ A hundred and sixty-five for that 
piece? ” 

“ Piece, Mademoiselle? ” in a small shriek from 
the saleswoman. “ The piece, you say? Ah, but 
no, no, no, no, no, no, no,” an ascending gamut of 
negation. “ For the yard, one hundred sixty- 
five. . . . It is much?” Shriek. “ Too much? For 
Mademoiselle who is Americaine and rich, rich, 
riche? And with the Exchange, consider? But! 
It is a veritable occasion ! Behold how I give the 
lace to Mademoi ” 

“ Momma,” interrupted the child at her knee, 
holding out his nut-cracker man. 

Instantly the swift Frenchwoman whisked about. 

“ Tiens! I say always ‘ Mademoiselle ’ and it is 
Madame who hesitates to choose the lace? Behold 
now the so charming little boy of Madame, with 
Monsieur his Father ! ” Gesture that offered 
bouquets of welcome, of congratulation, of pro- 
foundly feminine admiration, and of appeal to Mr. 
Laverock. “ Who arrives just in time to buy imme- 
diately the marvellous lace for Madame!” 

At this embarrassing juncture (as it might have 
been) the eyes of Archie Laverock met, turned 
laughingly but straight upon him, the clear brown 
eyes of young Mrs. Wilmot, in a glance of — Yes! 
No mistaking it ! a glance of the frankest mischief. 

Coquetry, pure and simple! 

A look that instantly woke, in the Rover’s mind, 


224 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


the thought, “Yes! You look at me because you 
know we’re in a shop with crowds of French people 
about and your little boy leaning up against your 
lap all the time ! But if I were sitting out a dance 
with you on some terrace in the moonlight with the 
band playing in the distance and nobody there, you 
wouldn’t dare to look at me like that ! ” 

. . . She was pretty. Thundering pretty. Knew 
it, too. Still, why not? She’d earned any compli- 
ment; and — she’d brought a peach of a boy into 
the world as well. . . . 

She seemed to know what the young man was 
thinking; the mischievous half-smile deepened as 
she said quickly in French, “ I will take two yards 
of this,” opened her silver mesh -bag, and drew out 
her note-case. 

In a flash of resentment Archie Laverock thought, 
“Damn! Why am I not the man who has the 
right to pay for those frills for her? ” 

“ Madame pays? ” questioned the French sales- 
woman with a gesture that added “ Not Mon- 
sieur? ” 

“ Monsieur ” set his teeth at the thought that not 
only had he no right but also no three hundred and 
thirty francs to pay for that flounce. But he said 
readily enough, “ Well, if I can’t buy it, I can be 
allowed to carry it ! ” And carrying the flat green 
carton in which the lace was packed up, he followed 
Mrs. Wilmot out again into the sunshine and the 
fish-coflee-cliarcoal-and-sea-scented street. 

This time nothing was to be seen of any of the 
party from Mon Repos. 

“The others have disappeared,” remarked, in a 
tone of quiet rejoicing, the Arrant Rover. His eyes 


THE CHILD-LEAD 


225 


sent down a glance of mischief that more than 
matched her glance in the shop just now. “Very 
thoughtful and nice of them. At least I think so.” 

'Useless to deny that at this moment each was 
perfectly ready to flirt with the other. 

But her idea of flirtation was not his. She never 
intended that the rest of the afternoon should be 
a tete-a-tete barely chaperoned by the presence of 
little Marcus. 

“ I guess I know where those others are, just the 
same,” she announced laughingly. “ In that tea- 
shop where we went last time; yes, there ” 

The window of the patisserie in question showed 
Selma’s goddess figure spearing gateaux on to a 
plate for herself and old Stick-It. 

Cries of “ Here they are ! At last ! Here ! Gene- 
vieve ! ” came from the open upper windows. 

Among the pinks and blues and yellows clustered 
there, the late-comers sat down at the tea-table, to 
a merry meal. Young Laverock told himself he 
was glad dear old Stick-It seemed getting on well 
with this crowd of his; just what he wanted, a 
little feminine society to polish him up! Archie 
Tvondered whether it would be the pink or the blue 
or the red-haired girl who was going to attract old 
Stick-It. To himself, Archie, these were all, still, 
a crowd of many voices; the only one he differen- 
tiated from the others was that Swedish girl Selma, 
who stood out by reason of her height, and also by 
the enormous sea-blue eyes that — Could he be imag- 
ining this? — she kept fastened upon his face as he 
sat next to little Marcus but close beside Genevieve 
Wilmot. 

Already he had called her by that name; had 


226 THE ARRANT ROYER 

launched a manifesto that in a holiday party like 
this one he could not remember which was Miss 
Who ; it was so much easier to say Mabel, or Ethel, 
or Selma — or Genevieve; that was a name you 
didn’t forget. 

“ Personally I consider it an affliction you’d re- 
member. Genevieve,” declared Mrs. Wilmot, “ is 
invariably the name of the janitor’s child. . . . 
Mercy! ” she broke off laughing, “ will you look at 
Marcus’s face ! ” 

The brown Cupid face of Marcus was lathered, 
as if for shaving, with blobs of thick white cream 
out of the cliou-a-la-creme which he was devouring. 
His mother bent over him on the one side, striving 
to minister to him with a small mauve handker- 
chief; on the other side young Laverock with a 
tea-spoon cleared some of the cream from his 
cheeks. Over the dark, grape-curled head of the 
little boy the eyes of the two met again. . . . 

On the way down to the Quay the young Eng- 
lishman swung the child up to his shoulder and let 
him, so perched, ride towards the golden sunset. 
It was with an odd reluctance that he set him down 
again on the homeward-bound boat. 

“Past his usual bed-time, I suppose?” Archie 
said to Genevieve Wilmot, who nodded. 

“ I’d say it was ! I’ll have to undress him in his 
sleep to-night I guess,” said she with a pretty pos- 
sessiveness. 

Immediately young Laverock saw a mental pic- 
ture of this scene. With a sentimentality that 
surprised himself he wondered where and when 
some young, young mother would put to bed his 
own little son. . . . 


THE CHILD-LEAD 


227 


So far from true is it that only the unmarried 
woman holds to her heart that image of the Dream- 
Child ! So near was that dream to Archie to-day. 

For her, for Genevieve Wilmot, now crooking a 
slim finger through one of her boy’s curls, it had 
come true. He found himself envying her. Marcus, 
who had slipped himself and his little brown paw 
into Archie’s guardianship, must slip away again 
in a few days. Before that nut-cracker toy of his 
got broken, the child would have probably forgotten 
all about the tall Englishman who had given it to 
him and had carried him on his shoulder through 
the streets of St. Malo that day. But all his days 
belonged to his Mother. She’d keep him always, 
see him grow to youth and manhood. People said, 
“ My son's my son till lie gets him a wife ” Not true 
of the right sort of mother, thought the Rover, 
and wished his own mother hadn’t gone and died 
when he was only two. Younger than Marcus. . . . 
His Uncle-guardian had once told him how de- 
lighted she (Archie’s mother) had been to have a 
baby; how eagerly she’d gasped out to the nurse, 
“ Are yon sure? ” when told it was a boy. 

He thought, “ Kids. . . . Yes, a woman ought 
to be keen on them. Without them, she has to come 
to an end. With them, she needn’t. Some women, 
who’ve got ’em, aren’t one bit keen on them. 
What waste ! Pack ’em off to prep, school and don’t 
see them until the holidays. This little ‘ Momma ’ 
isn’t like that. She’s what she’d call ‘ crazy ’ about 
him. It’s very pretty. Her eyes are all different 
when she looks at the child. Gives in to him, a bit. 
But I bet he’ll turn to her when the sons of those 
admirable Spartan mothers are writing notes to 


228 THE ARRANT ROYER 

say they’re so sorry they can’t get Home next 
leave! ” 

Through the noise of the motors, the swish of the 
water and the chatter of the other passengers, he 
said to her softly, “ I suppose you only ” 

As he paused, she asked, “ I what? ” 

“ I don’t mean only you,” explained the Rover, 
meditatively. “ I mean people generally. I sup- 
pose they know it’s necessary to have * the Perma- 
nent Mate ’ because, without that, things wouldn’t 
be very comfortable for the little Marcuses and 
people. You ” 

He paused again. Then — Why not? One could 
surely say a thing like this to a married woman? 
He exclaimed, with real feeling deepening his pleas- 
ant voice, “ You ought to have a half-dozen of 
these ! ” 

She said nothing. 

The evening light, that turned the Emerald 
Coast-waters to gold, was strong upon her as she 
stood. It painted with amber her smiling cheeks, 
touched the outlines of her supple muslin-clad body 
that he had first seen wet — sheathed on the launch. 
Over the head of her little son she looked for the 
third time straight at the Arrant Rover. She 
laughed, half-dreamily, half-audaciously — wholly 
flirtatiously. 

. . . Did he imagine her reply? Did he lose it 
in the throbbing of the engines? Or did he actually 
hear her say, “ I’d love to ” ? 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 

THE SINEWS OF LOVE 

“If Sclimidt have got der dollars, 

He collars the girl deremit; 

But if we can collar der dollars, 

We collars de girl from Schmidt! ” 

— Kipling. 

H IGH up on the cliff young Laverock sat ; and 
from yards away any observant eye could 
have seen that waiting and watching were 
in every line of his attitude. 

His face was turned inland toward the cliff-path 
that twists and doubles between privet-bushes and 
fields and hillocks of thymy turf all the way from 
St. Enogat to Le Port. His shoulders leant up 
against the sun-baked stones of the inside of one 
of those white demi-towers built as sailing-marks. 
A perfect little suntrap he had chosen as his pitch, 
for the purpose (he told himself) of getting out 
of the wind for a smoke. But the “ wind ” he took 
for his excuse was the playfulest of baby-breezes 
that could but just roll the fat clouds, like snow- 
balls, across the blue above, and could but just 
slap into wave-crests the blue below. 

Archie wondered how the little Dulcie was get- 
ting on. She was not in the Bay ; she was at that 
moment scudding inland up the Ranee. Stick-It 
had decided to take two of the girls to Dinan for 
lunch; the chestnut-haired English-girl, Dorothy, 
and the pale-pink-f rocked flapper (a mere kid of 

229 


230 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


a girl, couldn’t be more than sixteen), called Gwen. 

Both of ’em at once, mind you. So like old 
Stick-It! thought Archie, resignedly stretching his 
legs out into the sunny turf before him. Dashed if 
he could make out which of the crowd of these girls 
they’d seen such a lot of during the last three days 
did appeal to old Stick-It. . . . Stick-It, who could 
marry any of ’em to-morrow, as far as affording it 
went ! 

“ It’s all a matter of ‘ affording,’ nowadays,” 
mused Archie Laverock in a resentful mood not new 
to him. “ What’s a man without money? Maimed, 
worse than if he’d lost a limb in war. ‘Money’s 
the Sineivs of War / they used to say. By Jove, it’s 
gone up. It’s ‘ the Sinetos of Love ’ as well, now. 
It’s ” 

Here a child’s voice, joyously shouting, cut into 
his reverie. 

“ Mr. Lav-er-rock ! Mr. Lav-er-rock ” 

Capering over his shadow on the turf and waving 
a wooden spade, there ran up the tiny figure of 
Marcus Wilmot; a white-clad, black-lieaded but- 
terfly on the cliff-lands. A taller white-clad figure 
holding in one hand another spade, in the other a 
lemon-yellow sunshade, followed behind. 

Archie, casting off thought, sprang to his feet. 
“ Hullo, old man ! ” 

Taking the child’s outstretched hand, he turned 
back with him towards the white-and-lemon vision 
on the path. 

“ Good-morning, Jennie! ” 

This was now his version of her Christian name. 

“ Good-morning,” she gaily responded. “ Aren’t 
you early ! ” 


THE SINEWS OF LOVE 


231 


She herself used no name for him, these days. 
Perhaps she knew that a “ you ” may be as inti- 
mate as anything else that could be chosen. On 
the other hand perhaps she didn’t know. One can- 
not tell with Americans, thought the Rover, baffled 
and bewildered. He fell into step at her side. The 
child would have capered ahead again ; but Archie 
caught at him by a handful of white tunic. 

“ No, you don’t ! You walk with your grown-ups 
till we get on to the sands.” 

“Why, Mr. Lav-er-rock?” 

“ Because you might slip on the warm grass and 
roll over the cliff,” explained Archie. The child 
thrust a paw into his grasp with a gesture now 
familiar to both ; and the young man turned to the 
child’s mother. 

He said, quietly, “ You aren’t playing tennis up 
at the club this morning? ” 

“ No ; I’ve a date to build a sand-castle with my 
son. You,” she added, also quietly, “ aren’t play- 
ing golf at St. Briac this morning? ” 

With equal demureness he gave her back her 
reply. “No; I’ve a date to build a sand-castle 
with your son.” 

Marcus, holding the Rover’s fingers, pressed as 
near as might be to a dangerous drop in the cliff- 
wall, and peered down at the water, gurgling and 
swirling in a channel at the base of the rocks. “ If 
I rolled way down there would I fall into the sea, 
Mr. Lav-er-rock?” 

“ You would indeed.” 

The child lifted dreamy eyes, full of interest. 
“ Would I go down the pipe? ” he asked, with evi- 
dent memories of gurgling bath-water. “ One o ? 


232 THE ARRANT ROVER 

my soldiers did once. ... I guess I pushed him a 
little bit.” 

They reached the end of the headland where the 
rich tall French hay grows down to the border-line 
of sand. Here began the dunes, and the crops of 
glaucous-blue sea-holly, of aromatic pink rest-har- 
row, of yellow Cambrian poppy. Everywhere the 
wild convolvulus flattened her blossoms of mauve- 
streaked-white close to the sand; or she twisted 
and wound her embracing garlands about the tufts 
of high-growing sea-grass. 

Little Marcus, bending down the few inches that 
he had to stoop, picked from the sand one of the 
mauvy -blossoms ; held it up to Archie. 

“ Thanks, old man,” said the Rover, and pulled 
it through the button-hole of his Norfolk jacket. 

For him, who had a quite unmasculine percep- 
tion of the difference between one plant and an- 
other! certain flowers were always connected with 
certain parts of his life. . . . Marigolds, for in- 
stance, and the red gold hair of a V. A. D. girl 
blazing out against white walls of the ward where 
he lay wounded. . . . For him, ever afterwards, 
the sight of wide-spread convolvulus-blossoms must 
call up that radiant morning, that flowery stretch 
of the Emerald Coast where swallows skimmed 
and soared and swooped and spun invisible webs of 
flight over the whole vivid map. It must call up 
a barrier of low rocks, cinnamon-yellow with lichen, 
and a little empty cove, of which the sands were 
flat and hard and glittering with mica that spread 
over them like “ frosting ” on an old-fashioned 
Christmas card. It must call up, too, the sand- 
castle and moat that were achieved that morning 


THE SINEWS OF LOVE 


233 


by two wooden spades and a flat pebble, wielded by 
the hands of that trio; the young man, the child, 
the pretty mother. . . . 

Marcus, tense with enjoyment, announced, “I 
am building it for somebody. Mamma, guess who 
I am building it for, for them to live in? ” 

Genevieve Wilmot, patting the sandy walls into 
fan-shaped patterns with her little hands, guessed 
“ For your Mamma? ” 

The grape-curled head was shaken. “ No ; it’s 
for a man-person.” 

“ Ah ! ” exulted Laverock, sprawling at full 
length face-downwards on the strand on the off- 
side of the castle where he w r as scooping out, with 
his pebble, the moat. “ There you are, you see, 
Jennie ! ” he teased her, half -laughing, half with 
that wish to sing which is born out of the conscious- 
ness that in some circumstances anything is 
“ nearer ” than politeness. “ I’ve put your nose out 
of joint with your own child! ” His tone put an 
unuttered “ pretty ” before the word “ nose,” and 
Tvould have betrayed to any feminine ear the fact 
that the air was growing heavier and heavier with 
all the words that he did not say. . . . 

“Oh, serpent’s tooth!” he mocked, softly. 
“ How soon the son deserts the apron-strings when 
he’s got ‘ a man-person ’ to consort with ! So the 
castle’s for me to live in, Marcus.” 

Young Laverock had not reckoned with the un- 
failing aptitude of children to take all or any but 
the course expected of them. 

For again the small boy shook his head. “ This 
castle isn’t for you, Mr. Lav-er-rock. I’ll maybe 
build the next one for you. This is for my man.” — 


234 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


Here the child grabbed at a bulge that appeared 
in his sand-encrusted clothing just above the belt ; 
he tugged out his adored toy — “ What you gave me. 
My nut-crackerman.” 

“ Oh, serpent’s tooth,” murmured Genevieve Wil- 
mot with a devastating glance, above the sand bar- 
ricades, at Mr. Laverock. “ Tell him he asked 
for that, Marcus ! ” 

But the child had pattered along off on the firm 
sands, down to a line of shells that he began to 
collect as decorations for the castle-walls. 

Young Laverock, ignoring his companion’s last 
remark, exclaimed abruptly, “ If it were as simple 
as that ! ” 

“ If what,” she asked, surprised, kneeling up on 
the sands, “were simple?” 

“ The housing-problem,” retorted Archie Lave- 
rock, ruefully, and with a nod towards his morn- 
ing’s work that towered between them. “ If one 
could make a castle out of sand and live in that! 
I was just thinking about all that sort of thing 
when you came up this morning, Jennie.” 

“ Sand-castles, you mean?” 

“ I do not mean sand-castles. Castles in Spain 
are nearer the mark. But you know that, don’t 
you? ” 

She patted the sand-wall, saying nothing. 
“ Don’t go on patting in that absorbed way when 
you are being asked questions,” remonstrated the 
young man. “ Tell me if you know what I mean? ” 

Her glance challenged him. “Tell me if you 
mean wha+ I know? ” But she said only, “ Maybe 
you’ll endeavour to make it a little "less com- 
plicated? 


THE SINEWS OF LOVE 


235 

He shook liis head at this coquette. Then, sitting 
up, clasping his knees, and setting his chin on the 
top of them, he stared away at the child’s tiny 
pattering figure at the other side of the cove. He 
began speaking, quietly and deliberately as if he 
were stating a case in some Court. 

a People talk about ‘this generation’ (meaning 
mine) and our ‘demands’ and our ‘luxurious 
standards of living’ and how we ‘shirk the duties 
our parents took on without complaint.’ Our par- 
ents ! Comparatively easy for them to go marrying 
and bringing up six, seven, ten little Marcuses and 
Jennies on three hundred a year. ’Course they 
could, then; in my country. Did them jolly well 
on it, too. Plenty of good rice-pudding and roast 
mutton galore. But you see rice was twopence a 
pound in those days. And mutton (the best Welsh 
mutton from Hamer’s!) was eightpence. Boys’ 
boots cost — what you give nowadays for a tie. 
School -fees were lower. Besides! They knew, 
then, what they were educating their children for. 
They’d some idea of what the Empire needed ; there 
was still some shape in their world,” declared the 
young Englishman. “ It’s crumbled now ; and 
who knows what shape it’s going to be to-morrow? 
But they, our people, didn’t know that everything 
wasn’t here for keeps. Yet they called themselves 
‘ hard-up / Jennie! ” 

The young American widow who had listened 
with attention, was looking at him, critically. “ All 
this, that you’ve been saying, is so foreign to me,” 
she told him. “ In my country, I don’t think the 
men sit down and mourn because the Cost of Liv- 
ing is all that higher. They just get up and hustle 


236 THE ARRANT ROVER 

until they bring their incomes up to the stand- 
ard.” 

The Rover, who had spent already so many 
glances upon this pretty creature, now looked at 
her again; considering, not her prettiness and 
youth, but the costliness apparent in her simple 
but perfect white frock, in the pearl-string on her 
rounded throat, the diamonds set in black enamel 
and winking on her sanded fingers, the workman- 
ship, even, of the tortoiseshell handle of that lemon- 
silk parasol cast down so carelessly beside her. 
Behind these things he could guess at her European 
travelling expenses, her 'pension- bills, her tips to 
staff on liner and in hotel. . . . 

He said brusquely, “ I don’t suppose you’d un- 
derstand. You’ve always, I suppose, been jolly 
;well-off.” 

“ Why, yes,” she agreed, a little surprised at 
Ms tone. “ My poppa always gave us girls a lovely 
time. We had a beautiful home.” 

“ And, then, I imagine you married a man who 
was very rich, too.” 

“ Otis was prosperous,” the young widow told 
him quite simply. “ He owned most half the larg- 
est interior-decorating-businesses in our State when 
we were married and do you know he started as 
Sales-agent for some person else’s varnish! He 
had such a wonderful grip of fundamentals ; Otis. 
He could take any proposition and make it right 
over.” 

“ I see,” said Archie, vaguely. Then, quietly and 
quickly, “ Do you mind telling me how old your 
husband was when he married you? ” 

“ Oh ! He was quite a lot more than I was. I 


THE SINEWS OF LOVE 237 

was nineteen ; he' d be most twenty-seven or twenty- 
eight years older than that.” 

“ I see,” said Archie again. “ That is the way 
it goes.” 

“ Way what goes? Do yon think I was not 
happy?” she asked with a flash of indignation. 
“ Otis was just the finest husband that any girl 
could have wished for. He was a real, worth-while 
man. And the most generous one that ever 
breathed ! ” Her clear brown eyes gazed reproof 
at Archie. 

“ Forgive me,” he said quickly. “ I put my foot 
in it. Forgive me? ” 

“ Surely ! . . . People are queer about age.” 
She relented. “A girl who graduated with me 
told me she felt terrible about seeing me married 
to a man so mature (and, of course, he’d put on a 
good deal of weight, that let him look not so 
young). I can’t see what difference it made.” 

He gazed wonderingly at her. 

She added, “ Well, there was one thing, of 
course.” 

“ What? ” he said, still looking at this girl. 

“ Why,” she explained, with a glance towards 
the child, bent over the shells. “ It might have 
seemed later on, that he was a little bit old for 
Marcus ” 

The Bover nodded. 

“But,” she concluded, “ otherwise ! Why, 

I didn’t have a wish that he didn’t go out straight 
away and gratify ! He would have worked twenty- 
four hours a day if I’d demanded it; he just wanted 
to pour lovely things on to me. That’s the way 
our men are, I tell you.” 


238 THE ARRANT ROVER 

“ I see,” said Archie for the third time. “ Now, 
I’ll tell you something.” He shifted his position on 
the sands, and looked very straight into those clear 
brown eyes, at once those of a woman and of a 
child; eyes that he had seen soften with motherli- 
ness, or sparkle with high spirit. He wondered 
how they would look, alight with love. . . . 

He said, “ Some of us might w T ork twenty-four 
hours a day and get no forrader. For instance, 
I’m poor. I haven’t a bean.” 

Her eyes were puzzled. “ Poor? ” 

“ Very,” he said. “ You know the job I’m on 
now. Sort of dry-nursing my pal’s boat. What 
do you suppose that brings me in? Food and 
lodging and a summer holiday. What do you sup- 
pose I shall do when, in a week or so, this job of 
mine comes to an end? ” 

“ Why — Don’t you belong to some big London 
motor-firm ” 

“ I did. I don’t now,” said Archie Laverock, his 
bright face clouding at the memory of that which 
had awaited him when, in response to that urgent 
wire, he had returned, with “ The Navarac ” from 
Wales to London. “ They gave me the push about 
three weeks ago, Jennie. They sacked me.” 

“Why?” she asked, with so much the inflection 
of little Marcus’s question-voice that the Rover 
smiled. 

“ As a matter of fact,” he told her, “ they didn’t 
tell me straight out why they did sack me. But 
I could guess. It was because of a girl ” 

“A girl,” she repeated quickly. “What about 
her? ” 


THE SINEWS OF LOVE 239 

“ Well, of course, a firm like that wouldn’t want 
to have their motor-expert flirting with the daugh- 
ters and so on of their clients,” explained Archie, 
reddening under his tan. “ So they made — an ex- 
cuse to fire me.” 

“ You had been flirting with her, then? ” 

“ I suppose — Yes. I had,” confessed the Rover 
in a hang-dog voice. 

In a voice of real interest Genevieve Wilmot put 
the question which at this juncture would have been 
put, inevitably, by any feminine listener. “ And 
the girl — Was she pretty?” 

Before the Rover’s mind flashed a picture of the 
face of Mauve Rice-Mathews, sullen with depres- 
sion, set against the dripping oak foliage, the drip- 
ping moss, the dripping ferns. “ She wasn’t ex- 
actly pretty,” he said. Immediately another pic- 
ture flashed past of this same Mauve, alight and 
flushed, against the sunlit hayfield where his cara- 
van had rested. . . . “ Yes, she was,” he amended. 
“ She was pretty.” 

“ Well, but which? ” 

“All girls are pretty,” declared the Arrant 
Rover, laughing a little, “ if you come to look at 
’em.” 

“ But this girl; you wanted to marry her? ” 

To this Archie said nothing. It was a ques- 
tion so difficult to answer. Yet women seemed to 
find it such a simple one. They always thought 
you either wmnted to marry the girl, or you didn t , 
which? All you could offer in reply was George 
Robey’s ga g—“ Yes— and No” 

The American, as if she could guess something 


240 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


more than she had been told, remarked, “ This girl 
had money of her own. She would have married 
you, I guess.” 

“Oh ... I don’t know. ... I wouldn’t say 
that,” said Archie, uncomfortably. “ It — She — 
that is, I — We ” 

This flow of pronouns was stemmed by another 
question from the mother of Marcus. 

“ How did your firm get to know — that there 
had been any flirtation? ” 

“Not through her, I’ll swear! (She was a 
thorough sportswoman.) Nor through — through 
the client I’d been teaching to drive,” added Archie, 
more doubtfully. 

For he had pondered over that last evening but 
one at Rhos, when old Mr. Rice-Mathews had sug- 
gested to him, “Supposing the firm found they 
didn't want you any longer ?” 

He went on now, “ Anyhow^, it must have leaked 
out somehow, for they wired to me to return imme- 
diately, and when I did, it was this knock. The 
chief’s son (who was a pal of mine in the regiment, 
and a pal of Stick-It’s as w T ell) broke it to me that 
his Governor wanted me to go. Poor chap, he 
didn’t like the job,” said Archie. “ He nearly 
cried. Wanted to lend me money, too. < Take 
something to go on with , for the Lord’s sake ’ said 
he, and nearly cried, Jennie! Of course, I couldn’t 
do that. But when he suggested the job on the 
Dulcie I was glad to take that. Probably he’ll get 
me something else when I go back to London. But 
it won’t mean anything you’d call money.” 

She looked at him, not pleased. 

“ Plenty of people like me, in my country, these 


THE SINEWS OF LOVE 241 

days,” Archie assured her. “ nere I am. Rising 
twenty-six, sound in wind and limb, decent old 
Service family — not that that counts any more! — 

been at a good public-school ” 

“ I always have to remember that what you call 
‘ a public-school ’ is not what we call it, home. 
We’d say ‘ private school/ ” 

“ Would you? Extraordinary ... I mean — 
Well, take it that I was given the usual decent 
education ” 

“ Education,” she put in with all the Transat- 
lantic reverence for this factor, “ should certainly 
* count ’ ? ” 

He shrugged his shoulders. “ Not for more than 
five or six quid a week, it seems. It just feeds me. 
Wouldn’t dress me, if I weren’t fairly well-off for 
pre-war stuff. What d’you think of that? ” 

“ I think it’s terrible,” the American returned, 
but the disapproval in voice and look was less for 
his condition than for his acquiescence in it. “ It 

can’t be right. A man should be able to — to ” 

“Well?” he challenged her. “What should he 
do, d’you consider? ” 

“ He should be able to find some man-size, worth- 
while sort of job for himself and work at it. 
Surely ! ” pronounced this child of a continent more 
spacious, “ you don’t seem to me to have any sense 
of getting up and getting ” She looked at him, 
even more straight in the eyes than before. “ I be- 
lieve that if anyone wants a thing enough, it’s — 
Why, that it’s a deeply inspirational Force, and 
that he’s bound to win it.” 

“ You think that, Jennie.” 

“ I know it. Think it over,” she ordered him, 


242 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


rising lightly to her feet and tossing the sand off 
her skirt. “ And when you’ve thought ” 

She paused. Her heart, for all her light speech, 
was heavy. She was in the grip of an inability to 
conceive of a situation such as this in which there 
found himself this pleasant young Englishman 
whom Marcus so adored. Between him and her a 
barrier rose, impalpable, impassable. She only 
thought, “ If he really wants me, he'll do anything, 
somehow, to get me” He thought, “ Can’t she 
understand ? ” 

She said, “ When you’ve thought it over for a 
week, Mr. Archie Laverock, you can write and tell 
me what conclusion you’ve come to.” 

Archie, also on his feet, looked down at the peach- 
tanned earnest face of the rich man’s widow to 
whom Money had never meant Impossibility. 

“ Write?” he echoed. “ Why must I write it? 
I’ll tell you by word of mouth. I shall still be 
here.” 

“ But I shall not be here,” said the American 
girl. 

She had but that moment thought of this solution. 

Archie, blank; “ Not here? You’re going away; 
back to the States? ” 

“ Not right away,” she told him. “ We’re going 
on further down the coast. Concarneau, perhaps, 
where they have the fishing-nets and the sails 
bright blue to match the sea. I’d like to see that 
— so would the boy ” 

“ You’re going down there? ” he exclaimed, dis- 
mayed. “ Next week? ” 

“ Or before that, maybe. I don’t know as it’s so 
good for Marcus, being always with a bunch of 


THE SINEWS OF LOVE 


243 


girls. They spoil him,” declared the young mother, 
demurely. “ I have thought for some time that 
maybe we’d better hit the trail again soon, and 
pack up from Ker Babel. It’s no use staying in 
one spot for the whole of a summer, is it, if there’s 
nothing to keep you from moving along; now is 
there? ” 

“ I — see,” said Archie Laverock, looking down 
very straight into the soft peach face that held, 
still, a purpose behind its mischief. 

She meant, “ If you want me, come after me. If 
it’s a question of the money , get it, somehow, the 
way our men get everything tve want, for us! ” 

And then the tete-a-tete was broken up by Mar- 
cus, pattering up to them from the shell-line, with 
delight and excitement shining from his Cupid- 
face. 

“ Oh, say ! Momma ! Mr. Lav-er-rock ! See what 
I found ! ” He skipped and jumped, holding out an 
oval white object. “ Oh, say, it’s a wonderful 
thing! It’s what the sand-castle’s going to be 
for. ... I found it myself. . . . That boy at the 
Hotel de la Mer has got one. ’Tisn’t as big as 
mine! It’s a cuttle-fish-bone — i — ” 

He could think and speak of nothing but this 
newly-acquired treasure — “ Mr. Lav-er-rock, where- 
abouts on the cuttle-fish did this bone drop from? 
What became of that cuttle-fish that this belonged 
to? Can they really make tooth-powder out of 
cuttle-fish bones? How? Say, hasn’t a cuttle-fish 
got any other kind of bone, only this one? ” — all 
the way back to St. Enogat. 

“ Something he’s found. That’s more to a boy 
than anything we could buy him,” commented 


244 THE ARRANT ROVER 

young Laverock to the mother as they walked 
along. . . . 

They encountered, of course, other visitors who 
may pass across this story like the blurs of sunlit 
colour that they seemed to Archie; golfing English, 
groups of Frenchwomen wearing the muslin hat, 
the uniform short, sleeveless frock, and the delib- 
erately sun-scorched complexion that was a Con- 
tinental rage that season. Then, as the trio were 
nearing the steps that are cut in the rock and lead 
down to the plage, there passed them a classically 
tall shape in love-in-a-mist blue, striding cliffwards. 

She went by swiftly and without a look. 

“ Selma,” exclaimed Genevieve Wilmot — “ Selma, 
and she didn’t even see us ! ” 

But the Swede girl, once their backs were 
turned, wheeled about, and lingered to watch them 
out of sight. Inevitably as the sunflower turns 
with the turn of the day, the girl’s gold head 
twisted and craned towards the last glimpse of 
Archie Laverock. 

That Rover had not given her a thought. His 
growing pre-occupation was' “ Now what would it 
take to get me down to Concarneau? How much 
would it cost to put up there? Where am I going 
to raise the money? ” 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 

TURN OF THE GAME 

“ Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel ” 

— Tennyson. 

S O arrant a gambler in Life as was Archie Lave- 
rock need care little for other games of 
Chance. 

He, anyhow, had not bothered to set foot in the 
Casino of the Boulevard President Wilson, which, 
outside, resembles a giant’s bride-cake, and, inside, 
is a Waring and Gillow translated into French. 
Stick-It had never been near the place. 

But a couple of evenings after the morning of 
sand-castles found Archie one of the cosmopolitan 
mob that pressed or circled moth-like about the 
lights and the green tables. 

He told himself, “ I’ll play ten francs ; then I’ll 
go. If I win anything (which isn’t like me), well 
and good. If I don’t, well and bad. It’s only ten 
francs.” 

He drew them from his note-case. Ten of those 
pathetically frayed and dirty franc-notes which, 
that season, made up so much of the currency of a 
struggling nation. 

As he threw down the first of them over the 
shoulder of a woman in jade-green, he thought, 
“ How’s this for my fare to Concarneau?” . . . 

The turn of the game swept it from him as a 
leaf is swept away by the swollen brook. 

245 


246 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


“ As usual,” thought he, with a laugh. “ Ass 
that I am.” 

He drew back, stood aside. 

His franc-note against the Bank was against no 
more odds than he himself — Archie Laverock, his 
strivings, his adventures, his ambitions, his loves, 
his hopes — against a world that rolled on. . . . 
Rolled? For the last six years it had seemed not 
so much to roll as to hurtle itself from boulder to 
boulder down the cosmic precipice. 

He glanced at the polyglot crowd; faces alive, 
eyes bright, mouths greedy — For what? The whole 
place was stuffy; over-heated; over-scented. . . . 
He’d a good mind to get back to the clean night and 
old Stick-It and the Dulcie before he even risked 
the remaining nine francs. . . . He turned, instinct- 
ively a-search for fresh air, towards the long win- 
dows of the noisy, crowded, scented salle. Those 
windows opened on to the terrace overlooking the 
Bay and the gleaming arrows of radiance shot from 
the lights at sea. As if drawn by something, 
Archie made his way through the mob towards the 
windows; then found what it was that must have 
drawn him. 

They were the eyes, fastened upon him, of some- 
one who had been standing outside on the terrace 
and gazing into the lighted room. 

She moved towards him. It was Selma, the 
Swedish girl. With her long easy stride she came 
up to him before he could pass the lintel. 

“ Good-evening,” said Archie with a smile. 

Gravely she returned his greeting, in French. 
All those girls at Ker Babel spoke French (varie- 
gated) in addition to their own tongue, whatever 


TURN OF THE GAME 


247 


that might be. This Scandinavian goddess, he 
knew, understood English also. So, in that lan- 
guage, Archie asked if she were playing. 

In French she replied, “ No, Monsieur; I was 
taking coffee on the terrace ; I came in to bring you 
a message.” 

Fluent enough, Selma’s French, but of unfa- 
miliar accent. The “ R ” she achieved as no Eng- 
lish speaker does, but she said “che” for “je,” 
young Laverock noticed. Other things he found 
himself suddenly and swiftly noticing about this 
girl who towered above the bearded Frenchmen, 
the gaudy restaurant-hats of the other women in 
the crowd. 

“ By Jove, she’s looking extraordinarily hand- 
some to-night. That frock, I suppose. White and 
lots of yellow and those amber beads — Clever ! 
She’s on to it that a fair girl ought to match her 
hair with golds and yellows and things — not for 
the brunette. . . . She is too tall, though. . . . 
Huge! Must be quite six foot. . . . But it’s a 
wonderful figure. What a sweetheart for some 
man. ...” 

All this in a flash through the Rover’s mind, 
the while he returned aloud “A message?” He 
thought that certainly this must be from Genevieve 
Wilmot. 

But Selma announced : “ ‘ Mamma ’ says it 

would save her from writing a note to you, Mr. 
Laverock, if you would tell me if you will lunch 
at Mon Repos t — morrow. Will you? ” 

“ I shall love to.” 

“ At a quarter-past twelve? ” added Selma. 

“ Right,” he said. Then, “ Are you alone? ” 


248 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


“ No. Oh, no. I am with ‘ Mamma ’ and Dor- 
othy,” the Swede girl answered, with a little turn 
of her head towards the long windows. But she 
stood as if held by something from returning to 
her party. Archie made no movement. For an- 
other moment they made a still, wordless group in 
that restless throng, that babble of voices cut by 

the croupier’s mechanical “ Faites voire jeu ” 

Then Selma, in her correct French, “ Have you 
been lucky, Monsieur Laverock? ” 

“ Who, I? ” He laughed. “ At cards? I have 
never won a sou in my life.” 

“ No? You are so unfortunate? ” 

“ Infernally ! ” 

Without looking at him, her darkly-blue eyes 
widened as though she had just thought cf some- 
thing. Sweetly and gravely she spoke. “ Will you 
let me bring you Fortune? ” 

“ Can you?” he laughed. “ You’d have your 
work cut out, Miss Selma! What’s your idea; a 
system, a mascot? ” 

“ This.” She lifted her hands to her nape. She 
unfastened the clasp of her amber string. 

Those honey-coloured oval beads, all warmed and 
scented from that milk-white, milk-warm, sculp- 
tured throat of hers, she put into the Rover’s hand. 

“ Borrow these, Monsieur, of me,” she suggested 
evenly. “ From me — from a woman — Enfin , they 

will be fortunate to you. Hold them ” 

“May I? May I really? Right.” Archie took 
up his side of the bi-lingual conversation. 
“ Awfully sweet of you. Thanks, so much. I’ll try 
this.” His fingers, clasping the coil of warmed 
amber as though it were another hand that he did 


TURN OF THE GAME 249 

not yet wish to let go, slid into his jacket-pocket. 
“ I hold them, do I, while I play? ” 

“ No. I shall play for you,” she told him. 
“ Now, give me your money.” 

“ This is all I’ve got.” Ruefully he pulled out 
and handed to her the small tattered sheaf. “ Nine 
francs — I say, they’re horribly dirty for you to 

touch, d’you mind ” 

She gathered them together. “ It will be 
enough,” she said. “ Nine is a good number.” 

“ Is it? Well! I’ll watch what this does for 
me. Come along then.” 

Gently he took her by the upper arm to steer 
her through the press of people; meeting them as 
they went on to the dancing, overtaking them on 
the way to the gaming-table and revolving wheel. 
People glanced up at them, probably taking the 
effective pair for a brother escorting his handsome 
sister. His was a brother’s gesture. But those who 
mistook him for a brother had not seen her face. 
She kept it averted as though she hated the sight 
of the young man, lithe and lightly-moving as some 
cat-beast, with “ fauve ” eyes and small head 
(golden as her own) held joyously high. Her face 
was still tense; her generously -moulded lips pressed 
tightly together; her eyes intently ahead. It was 
a face holding back the quivering radiance that 
filled the heart of her because she was where she 
was. 

Close against his shoulder he felt the warm soft- 
ness of her arm as she put down the first of the 
franc-notes. . . . He did not even watch what 
became of that. He w T as watching the girl who 
played his stake. 


250 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


She was beautiful. She was even very beautiful. 
In a way so un-English, in another way almost 
English in type, deriving from races that left their 
mark upon our islands centuries ago. . . . 

There; she was gathering up some coins. She 
did not look at him. She put down another note. 
Archie, who ten minutes ago had been keen to get 
back to the Dulcie and his dreams of Genevieve 
Wilrnot, found himself as keen to stay yet aw T hile 
near Genevieve’s friend. . . . 

Confusing world, in which one was led definitely 
to believe that being keen on a woman precluded 
any possibility of being stirred by another at the 
same time. That was not so, the Rover found. 
Already in his career he had found that it was not 
so. One girl seemed to “ show ” to you another. 
Was this contrast? Was it because of getting one’s 
sensibilities quickened generally, so that one felt 
drawn, not only to dark loveliness but to golden 
beauty? Lord! The whole thing was such a blur. 

So was the place. The salle had become to him 
just one coloured blur. Only she stood out as she 
leant forward over the green table. Vividly clear, 
radiantly white-and-gold, this Northern girl. 

Archie thought : “ Where did I hear that the 
Scandinavian woman is a volcano under snow?” 

“ Fait es votre jeu! ” intoned the croupier. . . . 
Selma was gathering up notes now . . . Winning? 
Actually? 

Archie thought : “ What a wicked waste that I 
can’t kiss her.” 

Then, he thought, “ But, dash it! Considering 
that all I want to win any money for is just to 


TURN OF THE GAME 251 

chase off to Basse Bretagne after another girl, 
where on earth are we? ” 

No answer to this; in our present phase of 
Civilization. . . . 

At last the girl drew back, turning again to 
Archie. 

“ It’s enough,” she said, always in French. “ We 
stop now. Nine is a good number. You have won 
nine thousand francs, Monsieur Laverock.” 

Archie Laverock stared. Not since the War had 
he seen so much money all together as he now saw 
held out to him — to him ! — a crackling sheaf in the 
hands of the girl who had brought him luck. 

“ Nine — thousand — francs?” he echoed blankly. 
“A hundred and eighty pounds?” 

“ Yes. . . . And, if you please, will you give me 
my necklace, because I ought now to go back to the 
others? ” 

He took the money from her ; returned the beads. 
He saw her snap them about her throat, saw her 
smile away his thanks. 

u Do not come back to the terrace with me,” 
she said — and he realized that she meant it. 
“ Good-night.” 

“ A demain” he got out just as she moved quickly 
back towards the Casino windows. . . . 

Well, he would see her to-morrow. Wasn’t he 
going up to lunch at Mon Repos f He would see 
Jennie, too. Be able to tell her (Jennie) that they 
would presently meet again in Concarneau. He 
had his fare all right now, at all events. Nine 
thousand francs. Nine thousand ! Think of it ! . . . 
Nearly two hundred pounds to play about with, 


252 THE ARRANT ROYER 

thought the Rover in a jazz of exultation. 
Ha! . . . 

That lovely Golden Girl . . . such a calm voice, 
but she didn’t look as if she would always be so 
inflexibly calm. . . . She little knew the Luck that 
she had meant to him. 

Blue Concarneau, with Jennie and the little boy! 

How he looked forward to a quarter-past twelve, 
to-morrow. . . . 

— Yes, but why? Only because of the dark- 
curled American to whom he had practically 
tleclared allegiance? Was there no eagerness 
towards the golden Northerner? With which, 
which, did he most want to have lunch? 


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 
man’s choice 

“And a man who loves money may as well be content with 
one guinea as I with one woman! ” — Beggar’s Opera. 

S URPRISES were ill store for young Laverock 
when, at the hour of dejeuner next day, he 
presented himself at that over-filled flower- 
vase of a villa. 

For once no babble of voices and laughter re- 
sounded from balcony or lawn. There was not the 
gleam of a single tennis tricot amidst the bunting. 
From the lawn where that imitation fox-terrier 
was amicably posed beside those imitation hares, 
there appeared the grey-shocked Beethoven head 
and the processional draperies of the Mamma-in- 
Charge; alone. 

She held a hand out of her flowing angel sleeve. 
“ How do you do, Mr. Laverock? ” she greeted him 
in a faultless English. “ I am so glad to see you ; 
it will be kind of you to cheer my solitude. You 
know all my young people had arranged to go off 
on one of their expeditions; consequently I shall 
have you all to myself.” 

“ But how delightful for me,” murmured Archie 
Laverock, polite though pole-axed. 

No Jennie, then, after all his plans of what he 
was to tell her? No Selma? No none of them, 
not one of the girls at all? Lunch, d deuce with 
Madame herself? With “ Mamma,” who had been 

253 


254 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


a Tower of Silence ever since the first day that he 
and Stick-It had called at the villa ! Social inter- 
course between Mamma and the two Englishmen 
had stopped at polite gestures on their part, and, 
on hers, a stately acquiescence. Archie had har- 
boured the conviction that she spoke scarcely a 
word of any language but her native Danish — if 
that . . . 

But now here she was ; talking English not only 
quite as well as Archie himself, but with consid- 
erably more fluency than he (in his astonishment!) 
could, for the moment, master. 

“Will you come in? I have had the luncheon 
table set so close to the window that w T e are prac- 
tically out of doors and under the trees,” she said. 
She led the way into the polished, many-tabled 
salle-d-manger now so oddly empty, and echoing 
only to the feet of the little French maid who 
waited — upon the oddest of all the many lunches 
of which Archie Laverock had ever partaken with 
a feminine vis-a-vis. 

It was well-served, exquisitely cooked ; a meal of 
salads and omelettes and unfamiliar fish-dishes that 
the young man appreciated. . . . But at once the 
certainty came to him, “ She asked me up here on 
purpose to talk to me alone about something; now 
what is it? ” 

She began with the opening of any woman used 
to the conversation of men. “ Tell me about your- 
self, Mr. Laverock ” but without leaving the 

hiatus of embarrassment that too often follows. 
She went on with quick, intelligent questions as 
to what had been his wont during the War, and 
where his home w r as — No actual “home”? well, 


MAN’S CHOICE 255 

that was not nowadays looked upon as quite the 
tragedy that it had been? . . . 

The Rover, over his admirable sole, suggested 
that a fellow did feel the need of some sort of base, 
sometimes. Even nowadays. 

“ You’ve no mother, then,” the Dane lady said, 
sympathetically. “ Sisters? ” 

He shook his head. No, he sighed (beginning 
to feel more at ease and in form ) . Sisters ! He’d 
always thought that must be such a wonderful 
companionship. Actually, the only way in which a 
man gets the point of view and the stimulus and 
the comradeship of the other sex without any — any 
bother of complications and things creeping in! 

“ I wonder if you’d care two sous about that com- 
radeship, young Englishman,” remarked Mamma 
with some dryness — and instantly switched off on 
to the subject of nationality; began, without 
troubling Archie for his opinion, to talk types. 

u I ought to have a little cut-and-dried theory, 
if anyone should, of qualities in nationality,” she 
declared. “ Always in my 'pensions I have had to 
study these children of all nations. . . . The French 
girl. The cleverest, in a way. With her racial 
logic she has the reputation for seeing everything. 
But — She only sees facts. She thinks facts are 
everything. They are not, as you know. . . . 
Some more cider to Monsieur, Simone.” 

Archie drank cider, listened quite amusedly, but 
was it to discuss these abstractions that he had 
been invited by this extraordinary hostess who 
looked like Rodin’s statue of Balzac, say, and who 
talked like a book? 

She went on. “ Then, the American women ” 


256 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


Archie looked up. 

« Sometimes I wonder,” Mamma said, “ if the 
American — beautiful and intelligent and soignee as 
she is— is merely a gesture? ” 

“ What,” demanded Archie quickly, “ can you 
mean by a woman being a gesture?” 

“ Ah, one cannot really generalize. When one 
says < American,’ one has to think, first, is it Latin- 
American, or Teutonic-American, or South-Ameri- 
can-American, or Anglo-Saxon-stock- American? ” 

“ Eh — Surely lots of American women,” said the 
young man with his mind now full of one, “ lots of 
American women one meets might be English- 
women rather extra-well turned out? ” 

“ With a difference,” took up Mamma. “ Now 
the Englishwoman at her best is wonderful. Gay 
spirits when there is most need and least cause for 
gaiety ! Dogged principles ! As for work — I knew 
your English war-nurses. Any woman can work 
when organized and armed with the proper tools, 
but the Englishwoman is the — the spur-of-the- 
moment-miracle-worker! Flung on her resources, 
she shone. . . . Only in one way does she not 
shine.” 

Archie ( still thinking, “ But what does this per- 
son really want to talk about? ”) inquired, “ What 
way? ” 

“ The woman is a fool wdio expects, in an Eng- 
lishwoman, a loyal friend,” averred this Danish 
critic. “ There are exceptions. The English- 
woman-of-the-rule, Mr. Laverock, has no generosity 
for her own sex. She be-littles her intimates. Now, 
the Celtic-British have hearts ; warm for both 
sexes, emotional, beauty-loving, like the little Gwen 


MAN’S CHOICE 


257 


who stays with me. But your Englishwoman will 
let down the woman who is her friend for the man 
whom she has just met.” 

“Oh, come. ... I say, Madame!” 

“ The American woman is not so. Possibly that 
is because she does not sufficiently like men, qua 
men. . . . The coffee, Simone, and bring also those 
liqueur-glasses with the green stems, and the Kar- 
savina and the sandal-wood box with cigarettes,” 
added the Danish lady to the maid, in French as 
perfect as her English. “ Afterwards you may go 
(if the heart tells you so) until it is time to assist 
with the evening-meal for those ladies. . . . Now, 
Mr. Laverock, how will you have yours; black?” 

Then, when the maid had gone, it came. It came, 
that for which the lunch and the generalities about 
women had been a prelude. 

Archie’s hostess, handing to him his cup of 
matchless coffee dark and scented as a clove-car- 
nation, said, “ I invited you to-day because I 
wanted to ask you a favour.” 

“ Oh, yes? Anything that I can do,” began the 
young man, “ of course ” 

The granite-grey eyes turned upon him a glance 
friendly enough. Gently, she spoke. 

“ I want you to go away, at once.” 

“ Toi To go ? ” 

But even as the concerned Archie rose from his 
chair, she smiled; made a gesture of capable hands 
and flowing sleeves. “ Oh, sit down. I do not 
mean go at this moment, Mr. Laverock. Not before 
you have even tasted my coffee. Please! You will 
remain at least until you hear why ” 

She paused and smiled again at him. — “ Why a 


258 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


tiresome old woman wishes to banish you, as a visi- 
tor, from Mon Repos ” 

Aghast, Archie thought, “ Good Lord ! What 
does she imagine? ” 

Hurriedly, incredulously, he put in “ You mean, 
you don’t want me to come again? ” 

“ Not again, Mr. Laverock.” 

“ Oh ■” he said, still aghast. Then, again, 

“ Oh — I — er ” 

His thoughts raced. He’d done the wrong thing, 
somehow. But what? Only by mistake, at all 
events. Whatever it was! . . . Surely this was 
rather unexpected — A bit drastic. . . . He, Lave- 
rock, to be asked not again to call at a house . . . ! 

He stiffened. “ Of course,” he said, “ I shall not 
dream of coming. . . . But, may I ask . . . How 
have I been so unlucky as to displease you? ” 

She smiled quite broadly. This annoyed the 
young man. He froze into added stiffness. 

“ Whatever I may have done it has been quite 
unintentional on my part, I assure you.” 

“ I think that,” she said. “ But it remains.” 

“ What remains, please? ” 

“ The fact.” 

“ Which fact? ” 

“ That you, Mr. Laverock, are too disturbing for 
this house full of girls.” 

He opened his lips to echo blankly, “ Disturb- 
ing? ” But felt he could not go on like this. 
Parrot-like repetitions of everything a woman 
said. . . . Still, what else was there? This was 
so grotesque, so utterly mad. He stared. 

She said, “ Shortly, all my girls would be quite 
unhappy. On account of you.” 


259 


MAN’S CHOICE 

“Of me?” exclaimed young Laverock, in un- 
feigned anger. “ I assure you, you are absolutely 
mistaken ! ” 

“ I do not make those mistakes.” 

Please let me say that you have made one now. 
I assure you — you are quite, quite, quite 
wrong. ...” 

“ ^ ie assurances of my own age and experience 
have more weight,” said Mamma, quickly. “ I am 
right.” 

They looked at each other across the table : the 
young man, angrily flushed under his blond tan, 
alert, with indignation expressed in the set of his 
shoulders, the fling-back of head, the movement of 
his fingers that clutched, without knowing that 
they did so, his coffee-cup — the ageing woman 
watchful and composed. 

She broke the moment’s silence. 

“ It is not anything irrevocable, you know ! No 
tragedy has happened, yet. Only — Very soon a 
pleasant summer holiday, so stimulated by this ac- 
quaintance with you, would be spoilt. By you. 
By you ! Already ” 

She met the angry inquiry of his stare. 

“ Must you have it? Already one girl ceases 
to reply to the daily letters of her fiance. Already 
others make no engagement for the day without 
first seeing you. Already they change their time 
for swimming. (Not because of the tide.) Already 
two of them are not the friends together that they 
were. Already Mr. Laverock ” — here the wise 
face clouded a little — “ another of them, poor 
child! is so far infatuated ” 

“No, No!” cried Archie, and set down his cup. 


260 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


Oddly, lie seemed to sense the feel of a bead neck- 
lace, smooth, warm, within his empty palm. 
“ There’s nothing of the kind, believe me ! ” 

“ so infatuated that she may presently take 

her courage in both hands and propose to you. 
Marriage at least.” 

More miserably uncomfortable than he had ever 
yet been made to feel, the appalled Laverock re- 
monstrated, “ Oh, please don’t ! I can’t — I can't 
believe that you aren’t — aren’t ragging me, 
Madame ” 

Madame sipped coffee, unmoved by this quite 
sincere outburst. She filled for him his green- 
stemmed liqueur-glass. Then she said, “ You will 
not tell me that this has never yet happened to you 
in all your life.” 

“ Good Heavens ! Never,” curtly replied the 
Arrant Rover. 

His hostess returned, with odd approval, “ I 
might have known that you would say so.” For she 
recognized the true Rover-type, from whom so 
little is heard of previous rovingsi — unlike the 
Failure-in-Love who takes it out in talk. 

She said, “ Wherever you go, there happens these 
episodes.” 

( Mutter of denial from Archie. ) 

“ I cannot have these episodes here,” decreed 
this Mother -in-Charge of a cosmopolitan pension. 
“Without any ill-will, with all my sympathy and 
best wishes, I tell you so. You, I know, mean no 
harm. You sun yourself in bright eyes. I believe 
that personally you have no special choice here. 
But they — ! You must go. Go while you are still 
the dream, the fore-taste of how they are meant 


MAN'S CHOICE 


261 

to be happy. It would be kind if you left Dinard.” 

Archie had glanced up quickly as she uttered 
the words “ no special choice ” Why should she 
have thought that of him? Was he such a waverer? 
Had he no choice? But of course he had. There 
closed down upon him that mood in which he had 
been wrapped during that morning of sand-castles 
with Jennie and her little chap. Of course, she 
w T as his “ Choice.” 

He cleared his throat, met, squarely, the eyes of 
the Dane-lady, and said, “ Naturally if you say you 
wish it, I shall leave Dinard at once. My friend’s 
people come over next w T eek. But I shall go to- 
morrow, Madame. As a matter of fact I was 
going — I was moving dowm the Coast ” 

She said quickly, “ Shall you be going near Con- 
carneau? ” 

Archie, a trifle startled, “ Perhaps — No! Why 
do I say ‘ perhaps ’? I know that as it happens I 
shall be going to Conearneau.” 

He thought again, fleetingly, of those nine thou- 
sand francs that had been won for him last night. 

Dryly his hostess said, “Ah. Then you have a 
preference. I might have spared you w T hat I said. 

I thought you came here to look, to make yourself 
liked, to take nothing very seriously ” 

“ You don’t give me a particularly pleasant char- 
acter,” remarked the Rover, not without bitterness. 

His hostess finished her coffee before she looked 
at him again ; she pushed aside the little Britanny- 
ware ash-tray. Then, “ Forgive me if I have bored 
you,” said she, simply and sweetly. “ I am too old 
to have hurt the feelings of any young man.” 

Archie looked back into the grey eyes under the 


262 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


snowed-upon hair. The sudden thought came to 
him that it was hard luck that any woman must 
grow old and grey. His own mother had gone over 
at twenty-eight. . . . Touched, he found himself 
unbending. He rose, in a tentative manner, spoke 
in an altered tone. 

“ Good Heavens ! / haven’t been ‘ bored.’ But 
I shall be hurt if you don’t feel that — that it’s as 
friends that you say good-bye to me?” 

She took his offered hand in a cordial matter- 
of-fact clasp. Whimsically, she responded. “ In 
the altered circumstances, why good-bye just yet? 
Why not return to dine here, Mr. Laverock, with — 
the others? ” 

“ Might I? ” eagerly. “ You would not mind? ” 

She let go his hand, gathered together her 
draperies, made a gesture that seemed to put aside 
further responsibility. 

“ Come back,” said she, u and spend the evening 
with the Choice, if you'd like that? ” 

“ There is something I should like better.” 

“ What is that, Mr. Laverock? ” 

“ Until the others come back, let me stay with 
you,” he begged. “ Make some of your beautiful 
music, just for me. Play to me. Will you? 
Please? ” 

“ Ah,” she exclaimed, looking up at him. “ Poor 
girls! Poor children! . . . How I can see it! — 
Very well. I will make music for you, moi” 

She swept before him through the folding-doors 
into the dim, polished, Continental salon. She 
pointed to a chair, sat dowm herself before the 
great piano that, like a pool of bog-water, reflected 
her ivory robes, her eccentric, noble head. 


MAN’S CHOICE 


263 

“ What do you care for? Can you endure < clas- 
sical’ music? Yes? Beethoyen?” 

"No, not Beethoven, if you don’t mind,” said 
Archie with a swift disconcerting memory of the 
Moonlight Sonata — and Mauve. “ Anything else 
I’d love.” 

Anything else that came into her head she played 
to him. She played to him wondrously, until the 
others returned. 

With that return of the others, there fell upon 
young Laverock, quite curiously and unexpectedly, 
a mood that was not usual to him. 

It may have been that the Dane-lady’s music 
still surged and swung in his blood. It may have 
been that the July evening breathed in through the 
open windows some Pagan spell. It may have been 
that he felt a touch of that bravado that informs 
a man on the eve of his wedding, when, among his 
pals, he carouses for the last time as a free 
bachelor. With the first sight of Genevieve’s 
piquant face in the doorway he had told himself, 
“ Yes. There’s my girl. No fooling about, after 
this. No thinking of any other girl after to-night.” 

You see the “Johnnie Armstrong’s Last Good- 
night ” touch. . . . 

For then — Then it was that he began to spend 
the evening in good earnest— by flirting with a 
dozen girls at once; flirting delicately, unmistak- 
ably and deliberately. 

At table — the longest table, bright with coloured 
French napery and Brittany-ware and cut roses 
and hand-painted candle-shades showing purple- 
and-crimson fruits on a ground of glowing orange — 


264 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


the Rover sat between Genevieve Wilmot and the 
school-girl Gwen, opposite to Selma, stately as a 
lily of the garden in her gold-and-white. To each 
of these three did the Arrant Rover convey the 
impression that he had eyes for none but her. 
To the others, too, he conveyed it. He lifted his 
glass, said, gently, “ Happy days ! ” and each girl 
there took it personally to herself; she could not 
help that. . . . The Archie-type needs not to move 
a finger or stir a foot; nor even to utter a word 
that, written down, would have conveyed more than 
friendly politeness. Yet — Yet! Unintermittently 
he was enhaloed by an aura of male coquetry more 
deadly than anything that can be achieved by the 
female of the species — more insidious, chiefly be- 
cause it is so rare. . . . 

“ How right I was ; how right ! ” thought Mamma 
from the head of the table, glancing from the en- 
tranced girl-faces around to the figure of the guest. 

And Simone, the maid (who, being French, “ saw 
facts”), said within herself as she handed an am- 
brosial puree of prawns to the Englishman, “Ah, 
oui, Monsieur le Paon! Faites la roue! Faites la 
roue ” 

Which peacock form of allurement aptly de- 
scribed the manner of Mr. Archie Laverock during 
the entire meal. 

Up to now there had always been this to put to 
the young man’s credit ; that he had charmed invol- 
untarily. He had never gone out of his way. 

To-night (no getting away from this) he did, 
with purpose, do all he knew to please. Watchful 
and inwardly alert, poised as if he were again back 
in his last term, using every fibre of himself to 


MAN’S CHOICE 265 

bring credit upon the School-sports, he “ called up ” 
all he had. 

Those cat's-eyes of his — That lithe swiftness in 
movement — That grace in repose — That voice, pos- 
sessing every semi-tone in the wide gamut of per- 
suasion — These things which had already been 
praised in words that he irrelevantly remembered 
through the talk at the moment ! These attributes 
he definitely took up as weapons. He used and 
combined them with the u foreseeing ” manner. 
When a woman wishes the salted almonds passed 
or her wrap put about her, she should not have 
to utter a word; nor to glance towards silver dish 
or furs. The thought of them enters her mind — 
Enough! Almonds are to her hand; instantly the 
stole is about her shoulders. That was the manner 
of the Rover — and even that was a part only of the 
pure magic which, for that evening, he represented 
to every girl there. . . . 

Infatuation Yes. . . . But the Dane-lady, for 
instance, watchful and still as was her way, looked 
beyond a holiday evening where a dozen young 
women sat in school-girl adoration before one at- 
tractive young man. 

She w T atched him with eyes too old to be englam- 
oured, but wise enough to see more than “ just 
young Mr. Laverock off the Dulcie.” 

She saw him as a magic casement opening out 
suddenly in their lives. They would never forget 
Romance that had passed, setting up its sweet 
standard, leaving Tradition. 

More, she saw him as another Force, out- 
side that of love-stories. She saw him stand- 
ing typical of an Empire which, having received 


266 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


hard knocks, is not under yet. She saw that 
lithe, white-clad form squaring up to dangers 
and difficulties uncounted, one of thousands who 
have lived and died for ideals. She knew how 
that face of his could be set into the Collective 
face of his kind; how it appears, first touch- 
ingly young under the broad-leafed Scout’s-hat ; 
later, under the “ service ’’-mask and the peaked 
cap; again, sun-baked, marked with prickly-heat, 
it stares from under the shadow of the Solar Topi. 
The face of the Adventurer, of the Pioneer, of the 
Administrator in lands so foreign to his own mist- 
bound rocks; the face of the Briton unsubduable! 

All this, while she (now speaking French) sug- 
gested adjourning to the garden in order to let 
Simone and the other maid clear the Salle. . . . 
They seemed to have lingered somewhat over 
dinner, she said, in matter-of-fact accents. It was 
growing late. 

So late that already the moon was high, making 
of the scented garden without a jazz-pattern in 
black velvet and silver lace, turning the small, vine- 
wreathed arbours into caverns of mystery. 

Just inside one of these arbours — Was it entirely 
by his own engineering or in answer to some ges- 
ture of Mamma’s? — Archie found himself separated 
from the main cluster of girls whose softly-excited 
chatter still rose staccato above the noise of the 
chirping crickets, the far distant wafts of music 
from the band in the Casino below. He found him- 
self looking down into the dark, unreadable eyes 
of Genevieve Wilmot. 

Now! 


MAtf’S CHOICE 267 

The moment had come for which he had all day 
been waiting. 

Curious, curious, that now it had come he knew 
he could, if he must, quite easily wait for longer; 
could turn aside and talk to Selma, or Madame, or 
any of them! Could be patient until he met 
Jennie on the sands to-morrow. 

But that, he knew, was off. 

It was for now. 

Abruptly he spoke. 

“ You know I am leaving here to-morrow.” 

“Is that so?” she returned, in a voice that he 
could not place as merely conventional, as pleased, 
appealing, or surprised. ... A little of all these 
things sounded in it. She said, “That’s sudden, 
isn’t it? I didn’t know you thought of it.” 

“Didn’t you?” said Archie. 

Around him in the soft night there rose up a 
gale of the headiest, the sweetest flower-scent that 
Europe knows; it came from the tall-growing to- 
bacco-plants of which the stars, ghostly-white, 
sprinkled the clouds of leafage all around. He 
breathed in a mouthful of that most sensuous 
perfume before he spoke again. 

“ I shall go before you do. Shall you miss me 
at all? ” 

“ I guess we’ll all miss you.” She fenced — still 
in that rather uncertain voice. 

He, keenly atune to it, listened for a note that 
did not sound. ... It did not sound, that note 
which must make all she said into music. Not 
yet ! But ... It must sound. . . . 

“ You mean,” the young man said very softly but 


268 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


insistently “ all of you? That's not what I meant." 

“ Ah." She gave a little laugh that was the 
essence of coquetry. It perfumed all she said or 
looked or did, even as the tobacco-blossom scented 
the whole garden. Coquetry was in every tilt of 
her grape-curled head, in her eyes, her dimple, 
in the very gesture with which she flung a tortoise- 
shell-handled parasol down upon the sands of Le 
Port. Coquetry — unmistakable as the pattern of 
the butterfly’s wing. Created by Nature to allure 
man’s eyes, what lay beyond that lure? 

“ Well? ’’ Archie murmured low. 

“Well? ... I guess Marcus will miss you a 
lot. He ’’ 

Clear upon the scented moon-lit air a soft treble 
call floated down from an upper window. 

“ Mamma. Mamma! You haven’t come up after 
dinner to say good-night ’’ 

“ Coming, Honey ! " the young mother called 
back. “ Coming in one minute ’’ 

And her call was an answer, not only to her son, 
but to her suitor. 

Quite suddenly Archie caught it, that note in 
her voice for which he had been listening; and it 
was not for him. 

Her face had been lifted towards her little 
boy’s window. She turned it again to the 
Rover. 

But in the few seconds between these gestures 
something — a strange something had happened to 
the young man. A bandage had dropped from his 
eyes. He saw her, himself, her relation to him. 

She liked him. Sooner or later, if he wished she 
would be persuaded to marry him. She was inter- 


MAN’S CHOICE 


269 


ested, pleased with a good-looking man not much 
older than herself for a change. She was de- 
lighted, even, with the playmate he made for the 
tiny Marcus. Innocently she could plan with 
Nature to look upon this Englishman, clean-bred, 
clean-limbed, athletic, young, as the source of 
other possible babies ; perhaps of that lovely 
“ half-dozen ” of which the mention had been 
drawn from him on the boat. 

“ It’s because of that. Not because of me.” The 
thought flashed swiftly, with as swift a memory of 
what Mamma had said at lunch of the woman who 
didn’t sufficiently like men, qua men. . . . 

“ All the man she’s interested in is the one that 
young Marcus will be, some day,” he told himself. 
And then — 

“ She doesn’t want me ! ” thought the Rover, his 
young pride rising hot in re-action. “ She doesn’t 
want me.” 

For once this had upon him precisely the same 
effect as the over-fondness of another girl — poor 
Lucy. . . . 

He drew himself up. Only then lie realized that 
he had been leaning down towards her in the un- 
mistakable attitude of Courtship. 

There was nothing here to court. . . .Not. for 
him. Not for him ! A perfect mother, a finished 
flirt — No lover. 

In a voice that made her look up in surprise, so 
different was it from the one in which he had 
uttered his last words, he said : 

“ So this is good-bye ” 

She caught her breath. She was sorry; yes, 
sorry as a girl-child who has said “ no, thank you,” 


270 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


to ice-cream which has now been moved from the 
table. It was obvious that she had not meant this 
for the ultimate good-bye. Was it because he was 
English that he couldn't see that he might be 
allowed to hope? Had these men to receive defi- 
nite encouragement — or else did they go — just go? 

She said (but without that softer note that only 
a child could make sound in her voice), “Well! 
Do I have to say, Archie, that I shall miss you? ” 

“ Ah, no,” he returned quickly, and with a little 
laugh. “ You don’t have to. You’ll never miss 
me — I mean it’s too much luck to hope for that. 
I understand.” 

He took her hand. 

“ Good night, Jennie. The best of luck, always. 
Say good-bye to the boy for me.” 

Surprised, more than she had been in all her life, 
she exclaimed, “ Aren’t you coming upstairs to see 
him ? ” 

“ I don’t think I will, thank you. No. I don’t 
think I’ll see the little chap again. You say good- 
night to him for me. Like this ” 

And, bending down again, he put a kiss into the 
short thick curls above her ear. 

Silky-soft and fragrant, the touch of them went 
to his head. . . . He had heard that when his 
mother had wanted to keep him quiet as a year-old 
baby, she’d thrown him her furs to play with. Ever 
since then the Rover had had a weakness for any- 
thing scented and soft. . . . Yes, it was possibly 
just that detail, the softness of Mrs. Wilmot’s hair, 
that brought back all and more of his mood of the 
supper-table. 

With that throbbing again in his pulse he moved 


MAN’S CHOICE 


271 


out into the moonlight, shining down upon the 
pale-frock-coloured hydrangeas, the pale, hydran- 
gea-coloured frocks that clustered the garden where 
one hardly saw which was blossom, and which 
girls. . . . 

“ Good-bye, girls ! ” called Archie Laverock, 
softly, but with that note in his voice that made 
every woman think he called specially to her — the 
note which, had he been a lark or a yellow-hammer, 
would have been recognized as the mating-call. 
“ Good-bye, all of you. I am going. I shan’t see 
you again ” 

“ Oh,” came softly, and <( Oh ” as they moved 

in around him. He found himself, as it were, the 
circle of a ring-game. . . . 

“ So say good-night to me, nicely, just for 

once ” 

He caught at the girl nearest him ; it was Gwen, 
the school-girl. He kissed into her small face the 
red blood of her country (Land of perfervid emo- 
tionality!), left it transfigured. She did not say 
a word. . . . 

Nor did any of the other girls whom one after 
another he turned to and kissed, each one as though 
she were his own, each one as she had never yet 
been kissed and as in all probability (unless Fate 
were specially kind) she would not be kissed again. 

So he went through the group — Dorothy, Eileen, 
“ Mac ” and the rest. 

He turned to Mamma. 

“ May I kiss the music?” he begged, and lifted 
her hands to his lips. 

Only as he turned he remembered that there was 
one of them of whom he had not yet taken leave. 


272 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


“ Selma ! — Where is Selma? ” She had disap- 
peared. Gone in. 

“ Good-bye, Selma ! ” he called towards the house. 

There was no reply. He did not see, at an upper 
window, that golden head peering cautiously 
through curtains to catch the last glimpse of him ; 
no one heard the hotly whispered good-bye sent after 
him as he pelted down the flower-bordered steps to 
the scroll-worked gate. 

Outside it on the pavement he looked back tc 
wave at the cluster within that was so indistin- 
guishably of girls and flowers, flowers and girls. 
Some of them were waving back. 

“ Good-bye !” he called for the last time. And 
deep within himself the arrant, the sultanic, the 
reprobate Rover uttered a cry from the heart. 

“What a dam’ shame that I can’t love all o f 
them ” 


PART IV 
FATE 

(SCOTLAND AND THE HEATHER: 
AUGUST) 



CHAPTER NINETEEN 


HE MEETS THE GIRL 

“Et pourtant, nous pouvions ne jamais nous connaitre! 

Mon amour, imaginez-vous 

Tout ce que le Sort a du permettre 

Pour qu’on soit la, que on s’aime, et pour que ce soit nous?” 

— Paul Geraldy. 

O N his return voyage between France and 
England, Archie Laverock met with a fresh 
encounter. Not, this time! a romantic 
adventure. 

It was on board the Laura, where, with rugs and 
a long chair, the young man had decided to spend 
the night on deck. A cool evening; the spire of 
St. Malo Cathedral taper-white against dove-grey 
skies; the lights of the Emerald Coast slipping 
back ; an off-shore breeze. 

That breeze rustled the newspaper held up before 
the face of another passenger, stretched out under 
rugs behind Archie. Then the breeze caught a page 
of the paper ; swept it out of the reader’s hand. 

That page would have been whisked out sea- 
ward, but that it caught against the shoulder of 
young Laverock. He grabbed it. Holding it, he 
turned to restore it to its owner. 

“ Ah, thank you,” said a voice vaguely familiar. 
Archie found himself confronting a face also fa- 
miliar; a masculine, rubicund four-square, sailorly 
face, topped by a cloth cap worn a thought over 

275 


276 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


one eye. Both eyes, of a naval blueness, stared for 
a second. Then that voice exclaimed, “ By Gad ! 
It is young Laverock, isn’t it? ” 

“ Yes, Sir,” said Archie, with a smile of rec- 
ognition. 

For it was — yes! He saw, now. It was the 
Admiral of those by-gone and forgotten days, those 
days among the Surrey pine-woods, last May. The 
old Admiral! 

“ Talk of the devil! I was just thinking about 
you ! ” declared the elder man. “ Odd, wasn’t 
it? By Jove!” Then, brusquely, “ Have you 
seen this?” He held out the newspaper-page 
that Archie had just retrieved. “ Wednesday’s 
Mirror? ” 

“ I haven’t seen an English paper for a week.” 

“ Ah. Then look at this. Fair friend of ours 
here.” 

Archie glanced down at the page, folded over, 
on which the Admiral dabbed a pointing finger. 

This — This, in largest black type, was the an- 
nouncement that he read : 

“ CINEMA STAR WEDS INDIAN ARMY 
OFFICER.” 

Beneath, a photograph of a bridal pair stepping 
under an arch of swords. The bride in her snow- 
shower- veil smiled radiantly ahead, showing the 
small perfect egg-shaped face of — Yes, of Lucy Joy. 

“ ‘ Miss Lucy Joy ’ of Beauty Contest and film 
fame, leaving the Church with her husband, 
Captain H. B. Smith ” 

read Archie, breaking off to exclaim, “ Old Smith? 
Old Smith?” 

“ Know him? ” demanded the Admiral. 


HE MEETS THE GIRL 277 

“ Yes. Rather ! A friend of mine, Sir. . . . 
But ! ” 

“You didn’t know about this?” 

“ Rather not. The first I’ve heard of it at all,” 
returned Laverock, still staring at the incon- 
ceivable scene that was reproduced by the three- 
days-old Daily Mirror in his hand. 

Old Smith? That quiet beggar? Who’d have 
thought it? Of course, he had been asked to go 
over to the Blue Bungalow and take his banjo and 
have some music. Well! He hadn’t wasted much 
time. . . . 

Archie — who’d forgotten all about those people, 
since such a lot of things had happened — said half- 
aloud, “ He never wrote a word to me. None of 
them did.” 

The Admiral, watching the younger man’s face, 
said half-grimly, half-good-humourdly, “ So she 
turned you down, too, my boy, did she? ” 

“ Yes, Sir,” the smiling fib came promptly from 
the Arrant (but sporting) Rover. 

“ Come and have a drink,” the Admiral replied. 
“ I’ve just thought of something.” 

Over pink gins in the small deck-bar beside the 
Captain’s cabin young Laverock received the offer 
of his fourth job that summer. The Admiral made 
it clear to him in a few words. 

“ If you don’t mind a couple of months being a 
sort of chauffeur and head-porter ” 

“ It’s about what I am,” murmured the young 
motor-expert ruefully. 

“ Well ; it’s these friends of a sister of mine who 
are going up to Scotland for the Twelfth. They 
start the day after to-morrow. Big party, going 


278 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


up in three cars, with a fourth to take the gear 
they want on the way. They’re putting up at York 
and Edinburgh and so on. I was lending them a 
man of mine; reliable fellow. But I didn’t really 
want to spare him. If you cared ” 

“ Kind of you to suggest it, Sir ” 

“ You’d have to drive the fourth car up, see after 
the others when you get up there, and take the guns 
out.” The Admiral grinned over some thought 
of his own. Adding, “ They’ve pots of money. My 
youngest sister married money, you know ( sensible 
girl). I expect they’d do you pretty well.” 

Archie hesitated. Truth to tell, he was “ fed ” 
with this kind of job. (Messing about with other 
people’s cars and caravans and launches for a 
living! He’d come to a decision about that. . . . 

Yet— 

Scotland and the heather, by Jove, for the last 
time before he left the Old Country! For he did 
mean to leave it. That hundred-and-eighty quid 
that was to have been frittered away in Concar- 
neau — Archie meant to use it as passage-money. 
Out somewhere, British East Africa, perhaps. He 
hadn’t thought out details yet, but on that one 
thing he was determined. Out of England and 
these conditions he meant to get, and into what 
Mrs. Wilmot had called some “ man-size ” work. 

This, the Admiral’s job, would give him time to 
make arrangements, it w^ould keep him from break- 
ing into the precious hundred-and-eighty, it would 
be the send-off. . . . 

He accepted with thanks. 

“ Right.” The Admiral brought out cards, ad- 
dresses. a Here’s where you’ll report yourself. I’ll 


HE MEETS THE GIRL 279 

write a note to the people about you as soon as I 
get to town ” 

“ Thanks awfully.” 

“• and I expect it’ll be all right.” He gave 

a quick glance at the attractive figure, glass in 
hand, standing beside him. “ One never knows, 
Laverock; you might pick up an heiress yourself, 
my boy, up there,” he suggested, chuckling good- 
naturedly again. “No? Off sweets? Once bit, 
twice shy, eh? Well, well — Now, the party starts 
from the Royal Automobile Club about half-past 
nine on Monday morning. Day after to- 
morrow ” 

So there, in a word, young Laverock found him- 
self. Pall Mall, outside the R. A. C. 

Three empty cars. ... A fourth piled with 
expensive-looking hand-luggage. . . . 

Archie, the insurance-ticket in his pocket, stood 
checking the stuff, putting some under the seat, 
altering the roping of others. His get-up w T as work- 
manlike; a peaked cap, a leather driving-coat 
(bought, cheap, from a friend in the Air Force), 
old khaki riding-breeches, leggings, and neat brown 
boots. He looked at his watch. 

“ They’re due.” 

Punctually there trooped down the steps of the 
club The Party. 

“ The Party ” they were to remain, to Archie 
Laverock. ( The Admiral’s sensible sister cer- 
tainly had married money.) Fourteen or fifteen 
of them they were, and the collective effect was 
of expensive advertisements for Burberry’s and 
Zambrene, for it was a grey morning. 


280 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


Arcliie saw a huge man in a brown rain-coat 
slipping an enormous whisky-flask into his pocket ; 
saw The Party sorting itself out into minor parties, 
caught the gleam of eyes blue as the Admiral’s 
from under a small leather hat (that was the 
sister), exchanged a word with some other man 
who seemed to command. 

Then a voice, “ What about the Kiddie? Going 
in the Rolls? ” 

Another voice, a No room ! Can’t stretch one’s 

legs ” Another, “ Loads of room in our car ! 

Let him come in with his mother! ” “ No, no ” 

The most determined voice of all; a resonant con- 
tralto. “ So bad for a boy to be forever with his 
mother. I can’t have him. Send him on with the 
luggage. . . . Here ! ” 

There was thrust up against Archie, by the most 
pricefully-turned-out lady of all, a small lost-look- 
ing boy of nine in a school-cap and tie. The reso- 
nant contralto declaimed with hauteur, “ You take 
him.” 

“ You ” was young Laverock, who realized that 
to the contralto with the sables and the glimpse 
of pearls and the waft of Ambre-Antique and the 
exquisite shoes he was merely One of The Lower 
Orders — of whose feelings she retained not a mem- 
ory. Magnificent forgetteries the Recently-Rich 
had! Well, let us Present Paupers emulate that, 
thought Archie amused; one’s own kind have had 
their fling after all, and a jolly good innings. 

He put his heels together and his hand to his 
cap in the smartest manner of the ’Nineteen 
Fourteen Tommy that he had been for two months ; 
he tucked a wistful child of the Recently-Rich into 


HE MEETS THE GIRL 


281 


the front seat of the ear of which he — ex-Captain 
Laverock of a long, long line of old Regular Cap- 
tains courageous — was the chauffeur. 

The starting-up. The throbbing of engines. 

“ Give her a swing, Sir — Something-or- 

Other. ...” 

“ All aboard!” 

The slamming of doors. . . . 

Several backward calls to young Laverock of 
“ You, fellow, close on ” 

The Party was off. 

Archie, driving, shook with soft laughter. He 
wondered when he should cease to be amused that 
to all these people he was to be You ; a person with- 
out a name — 

A policeman, of pre-Revolution bearing, stopped 
him in the Finchley Road to call him “ Sir ” and 
request him to tell “ his man in front ” something 
or other; this, too, was rather amusing. It didn’t 
occur to “ his man ” (actually the important being 
at the head of The Party) to send him, Archie, 
on ahead. He chuckled to think of the days when 
he’d had to take out squads and working-parties. 
If he had not put a corporal to bring up the rear 
he might have dropped his men at the rate of two 
per hundred yards. 

On they drove. . . . 

Somewhere tucked in among those expensive 
dressing-cases were practically the whole of his 
worldly possessions; shabby kitbags, mud-stained 
Wolseley valise, haversack. All marked “ Capt. 
A. L. Laverock,” and the name of his old regiment. 
A poor rig-out. But — 

Also, he had in his note-case that hundred-and- 


282 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


eighty pounds. This job (it would only be for a 
few weeks anyhow) would save that, he thought 
again gladly. It would keep and feed him, give 
him time to turn round — and, after that — Hey for 
British East, Vancouver, or wherever it might be. 
A man’s life in the open. If there were no women 
there so much the better. 

(For — Need it at this point be added that the 
Rover-en-repos was now held by that mood when 
he was literally, completely, and sincerely indif- 
ferent to women?) 

Better build dams, clear forests, organize native 
labour. In short, any man’s work in a world fuller 
of work than it ever before had been. . . . 

Here, suddenly, a small voice piped up at his 
side. The little boy with the school-cap had found 
tongue, and in an apposite remark: 

“ I don’t like girls,” he said. 

Archie turned. “ What’s that, old man?” 

“ I don’t like girls.” 

“ You stick to that,” said the man at the wheels 
“ That’s a very sound line.” 

“ There’s a lot of girls up where we’re going in 
Scotland.” 

“ The dickens there are ! ” 

“Yes. There are a lot of my cousins. There’s 
one called Elsie, who belongs to Aunt Laura. And 
Angela. And Maudie. They’re all going to be 
there. Then there’s Babs. She’s a big girl, 
though. Bigger than me. She’s eleven.” 

“ That’s a good age. ( It doesn’t last. ) So she 
is the biggest, is she? ” said Archie. 

The small boy said, shyly, “ What is your 
name? ” 


HE MEETS THE GIRL 283 

Archie had thoughts of giving it as “ Mr. You.” 
But he said, simply, “ Laverock.” 

u Laverock. Our chauffeur’s name is Smith.” 

“ And what’s yours? ” 

“ I'm Royds Minor ; Freddie. I had to stay be- 
hind at school until I’d stopped having mumps. I 
have got a new electric torch,” said the boy, who 
was of those who confide, not of those who question 
those to whom they have taken a friendship. “ I’ll 
show it to you when it’s unpacked, Laverock.” 

Conversation between these two bachelors went 
on happily enough, as on they drove. . . . 

North out of London. Hertford, Hitchen, Bed- 
ford. Making part of a procession of baggage- 
laden cars or motor-cycles, all for the North. What 
a lot of money there was, still in the country! 
How little of it some people seemed to get! But 
his hundred-and-eighty ; he hugged it. It meant 
liberty to him; freedom, Adventure! 

At Market Harborough, halt. Lunch. The as- 
sembling of The Party. 

The man with the huge wdiisky-flask came up to 
Archie. 

“My gun-cases all right?” he said casually. 
Then, “ I say, about lunch. You’re to look after 
yourself, will you? Get whatever you want, won’t 
you ” 

“ Thanks,” said Archie. 

He realized that here was a man and a brother 
(also the Admiral’s brother-in-law). And marched 
off to cold beef, pickles, and beer. 

Then on again, under skies of sulky grey, past 
fields of golden mustard in full bloom, with storms 
of scent blown off it by the breeze. . . . 


f?S4 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


That night The Party dined and slept in a fairy 
city of Minster towers seen across an abyss of 
green gardens, of circling walls, of silvery canal 
with boats and barges — York! . . . 

It was going to be all rather jolly; seeing life 
and places at these people’s expense, without any 
complications of one’s own, thought Archie. . . . 

Next day again that small boy Tvas his com- 
panion along the mounting Great North Road 
where England seems to rise, rise, rise, beneath 
one’s journeying feet. The child began to count 
those wayside signs pointing “ To the North — ” 

Came Newcastle-on-Tyne; hideous and black and 
busy. 

“ The town that won the War! ” grunted one of 
the men; his voice drowned in shrieks from femi- 
nine members of The Party at the sight of their 
faces, unrecognizable for smuts and grime, in the 
hotel mirror. 

Black towns fell behind. . . . 

That day the heather began. 

It mingled with the golden bedstraw, the blue- 
bells that lined their northern, ascending route, 
it coloured the way ever more vividly with streaks, 
with patches, strips, stretches, vistas of mauve and 
purple. A freshening, colder, more vivifying air 
met the cars, flattening back from his brow the 
hair of the little boy who had now rammed his 
school-cap into his pocket. 

“ e To the North / ” he exulted as another of 
those signs swept by. “When we ‘ cross the 
border’ shall we see the border, I wonder! ‘To 
the North / look ” 

And at last they passed by a sign-board, all 


HE MEETS THE GIRL 


285 


white, bearing the word, the proud word 

" SCOTLAND ” 

Edinburgh Castle had appeared, like some huge 
crustacean which had crawled up out of the Forth 
and lay sunning its scales, which were the grey 
house-tops of its hills. 

The third day had passed, and the rush to Inver- 
ness, through country which reminded the Rover 
of his mother’s land. But Wales itself was a book 
of samples taken from the furnishings of the High- 
lands ! The hillsides were here wedged with 
birchwoods, the lapping llyns (here called lochs), 
the precipitous roads, the vivid joyous colours of 
mountain-land whereon ragwort flames yellower, 
honeysuckle rosier, blue-bells bluer and willow- 
herb a richer pink than in the paler, the facile 
South — the moors, the groves of mountain-ash, the 
rocky steeps — all these would have been like 
Wales — But, ah, the distances that the cars could 
cover before ever they came to a village, a chapel — 
ah, the endless stretches of unhumanized wild! 

Inverness, solid and grey as a boulder, had har- 
boured The Party for that night. . . . 

Next day — the fourth! — those sign-posts still 
urged them “ To the North ” 

On! On! 

White cascades stitched the dark crags around, 
behind. They left the hills. . . . 

Caithness ; flatter, spreading out carpets and 
carpets of pure heather, many-shaded, treeless. 

Up and down the white tape of road. . . . 

At last, at last in the distance there loomed up 
on the sky-line, loomed, big and gaunt through 
mist, a bulk of masonry, turreted. 


286 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


“ That’s the Castle ! ” yelped the little boy at 
Archie’s elbow. “ Isn’t that our Castle, Laverock? ” 

“ Yes, old man. Nearly there now.” 

A curious thrill ran through young Laverock as 
he said it. This might have been communicated 
by the child’s own excitement. Or it might have 
been the natural curiosity of the traveller who 
sees, at the journey’s-end, the unknown place that 
is to be for weeks his home. Yes; perhaps it was 
only later on that Archie persuaded himself, “As 
soon as I saw those towers against the sky I knew. : 
I knew that something was going to happen to me 
there , 1 knew something was waiting. Fate , 1 
suppose ” 

Came a long, straight drive. The Castle, its 
eleventh century keep, and fifteenth century wings 
buttressed on either hand by woods of ancient 
sycamore flattened down and matted together by 
winter gales ; upper branches leafless, trunks furred 
with squirrel-grey lichen. 

Came a brace of old cannon, set to guard the 
gravel-sweep over which the cars purred up to the 
entrance. 

In an arched doorway above steps there ap- 
peared maids in bright blue gowns with gay chintz 
aprons ; past these flew a little girl of about eleven 
with long brown legs, crying “ Mother — Mother ! ” 

The Party had arrived. 

Of the Castle and its inhabitants young Laverock 
< — chauffeur to The Party — that evening saw little 
enough, his preoccupations being the luggage, the 
cars, the man to work under him, the orientation 
of the garages, of his own quarters. 


HE MEETS THE GIRL 


287 


It had been arranged that the chauffeur provided 
by the Admiral was to sleep and have his meals at 
“ a lodge ” two fields away from the Castle itself 
in charge of a gamekeeper and of his sister. These 
peasants, having the exquisitely finished English 
and princely manners of the Highland Scots, wel- 
comed the young Englishman and showed him to 
his bedroom — • 

i — Where, Archie decided, every prospect pleased 
except that of having to get off the dust of the 
way in the tiny, blue-and-white ewer and basin 
that stood upon the three-cornered mahogany wash- 
stand. 

From his window he saw that the Sea — or rather 
the Pentland Firth — showed a quarter of a mile 
away ; smooth, but for the long slow waves uncurl- 
ing their chrysanthemum-white crests upon the 
near rocks. Beyond, the Orkneys touched by a 
gleam of evening sunshine, showed patches of 
green, a spread of purple. Little dark sailing- 
boats plied to and fro; big white gulls flapped 
shorewards, perching on the walls and gates of the 
Castle back-premises, driving the hens from their 
food. 

“ Jolly to get down and have an early swim to- 
morrow morning,” Archie thought. But his imme- 
diate need was for a w r ash. 

He had his idea for that ; he’d noted a wide stone 
trough-thing with a tap above, under cover of a 
big empty stable or barn at the back of this lodge. 
Quickly he unpacked his toilette-things ; brushes, 
mammoth sponge, loofah, tablet of verbena soap. 
Bath-salts he left on his chest-of -drawers. Taking 
towels he strode out into the incomparable air; 


288 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


then blinked, as from the dazzling slant of the sun- 
set he got into the brown gloom of that shed. 

Here was the tank all right; the tap, the icy 
water. 

Archie threw off coat, collar, and tie, humming 
joyously as he did so a quite inappropriate snatch 
of song. 

“‘He doesn’t look like much of a lover 

But you can’t tell the hook by the cover ’ ” ' 

Light of heart he was. Curiously alive. Stimu- 
lated. In a mood of excitation which, if he had 
(then) stopped to consider, he might have thought 
came from the amusement of the new place, the 
new people, the new circumstances in general. 

Only after the event did he tell himself (and 
another), “Why should I have been so bucked up 
over nothing f I must have felt then and there that 
it was just coming to me, just going to hap- 
pen 

There and then it happened. 

The noise of . the tap-water, running, had 
drowned all other noises. Also, Archie had not 
noticed that, about eight feet above his head, an 
open square trap-door led into the loft above the 
place in which he stood. But, as he turned off the 
tap, he heard for the first time sounds overhead 
and behind him. Sounds as of somebody moving 
about, sounds as of a pony that nosed in a 
manger. 

Archie, collarless and dripping, spun round. 

Down through the opening in the roof he beheld, 
dangling, a foot and ankle. 


HE MEETS THE GIRL 


289 


A small foot, in a brogue ; a neat ankle in a well- 
drawn-up, ribbed, brown silk stocking. Foot and 
ankle felt helplessly, irresolutely, now a few inches 
this way, now a few inches that, for something 
that wasn’t there. 

Then a voice came down. 

“ Angus! Oh, Angus! The ladder, please! ” 

Archie dashed towards the door, and looked 
round the yard. No ladder ! Whoever had touched 
it, since that brown brogue had ascended into the 
loft, had taken it quite away. 

Archie couldn’t go hunting about the unfamiliar 
grounds of Strange Castles for some ladder that 
might be half-a-mile aw T ay. He ran back into the 
stable, looked up. It wasn’t much of a drop. 

He called up, “ Hul-lo ! Right O. Drop ! I’ll 
catch you.” 

But first, with a swift instinctive gesture, his 
hands went up to his neck, to settle the collar and 
tie — which weren’t there. He' laughed to himself. 
Couldn’t be helped; he’d be taken for a stable-boy 
anyhow — 

Then, carefully over the edge of the trap, tram- 
melled about with a brown tweed skirt, was low- 
ered the other ankle. Down she came, her back 
to him. Then a soft shock: she had let go. Her 
yielding w T eight fell into his ready arms. Still in 
them, she turned. On a level with his eyes was 
the face of the young woman. Swaying back to 
keep his balance, he held her. . . . 

The next thing that happened was beyond all 
else unexpected. 

A girlish voice, running high with amazement, 
exclaimed “ Good Heavens; Archie Laverock?” 


290 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


Archie Laverock, for one blank second more 
holding her in his arms, stared into a known yet 
unplaceable face. A radiant face of soft adorable 
curves, parted lips, wide eyes. 

Who — 

Where — 

Then a slant of the sunset, straying through the 
crack of the barn-door, fell upon the girl’s hair. It 
seemed to blaze into a nimbus of marigold-coloured 
flame. 

Light of another kind dawned upon the young 
man as the girl slipped through his arms to her 
feet. 

In a kind of dazed shout he exclaimed “ 6 Our 
Ginger ’? ” 

Before she had time to reply to that old Hos- 
pital nickname of hers, he broke out into a ques- 
tion. Yes; with exhilaration and excitement 
breaking over him like a wave, and knowing what 
was going to happen to him now, and knowing too 
that even as he said it he was giving himself bound 
into her hands, he yet couldn’t help it. 

Breathlessly, almost angrily, and gripping her 
arm he demanded, “ Who’s Angus? ” 


CHAPTER TWENTY 


THE ELLIPTICAL INTERVIEW 

<f Hark, the Dominant’s persistence till it must he answered to ! ” 

— Browning. 

F OLLOWED, a dialogue somewhat extraor- 
dinary. It began at the so-entirely-wrong 
end! 

First, realize that these two young people had 
known each other (but had been in no way close 
friends) when Archie Laverock had lain, badly 
wounded, in a mansion of a sedate Square off 
Bond Street, which had been turned into a Hos- 
pital for Officers. Here the girl had, with half-a- 
dozen others of her kind, ministered to him. They 
had then gone out of each other’s lives, had not 
been on terms of writing to each other, had not 
heard of each other since the days of a war that 
now seems as far distant as the Crusades. 

Now here they met, without a word of prepara- 
tion, in a hay-scented stable of the Highlands on 
a stranger’s estate set at the furthest hem of 
Britain’s shores. They faced each other. She, in 
leaf-coloured country kit, hatless, her hair ablaze. 
He, shirt-sleeved; braces dangling above ancient 
riding-breeks ; shirt displaying throat, chest, and 
that abrupt line where sunburn hardened the tea- 
rose tint of blond flesh; forearms still dripping 
with water from that stable-tap. Here they were, 
but — 


291 


292 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


There was no attempt at the conventional, the 
normal ejaculations into which, in the circum- 
stances, one might have expected these two to 
plunge. After their first gasped recognition, there 
came no “ Hul -lo!” or “ You are Miss Ethel 
Johnstone, aren’t you? 4 Nurse Johnstone ’? ” 
Or “ How do you do? I say, isn’t it funny our 
meeting again like this? How small the world is, 
after all . . . by Jove, this is jolly. . . . What 
are you doing up here? ” 

None of that. 

How, indeed, could there be any of “ that ” in 
those first wild moments of shock and miracle? 

For this was what they had brought to Archie 
Laverock. This thing had fallen upon him, un- 
looked for as the girl who had dropped into his 
arms. It was the Force that is endlessly talked 
about, written about, sung about, worshipped — and 
endlessly denied, scoffed at, stamped out of Life’s 
scheme. Never wholly ignored! It was the Fire 
that still, still (every now and then, everywhere 
and there, without warning — without reason!) 
does flame up and blaze and sear all else into whis- 
pering ash of trivialities. Love, instantaneous, un- 
accountable ! 

It scorched young Laverock’s every da y, young- 
man’s-being into total inability to re-act in any 
normal manner. 

He was swept on to a plane quite alien to him— 
Or was it that the rest of his life had been alien, 
and unnatural, up to this? 

All he could think of, all he could do, was to 
demand again fiercely, “Who is Angus?” 

In the extreme of bewilderment, the girl stared 


THE ELLIPTICAL INTERVIEW 293 


upon him. Her face, vivid and glowing, was yet 
the face of a sleepwalker. One might have sup- 
posed her mind was working, rapidly, elsewhere. 
Her mind was not in that face of hers, nor in her 
voice that echoed “ Angus? What Angus?” 

“ Why! You called him, didn’t you? You called 
him,” the man before her said, accusing . “ You 
called out to him just now for the ladder ! ” 

She drew a little backward breath. 

“ Ah ” 

Then, very swiftly and suddenly, there broke 
from her these words : “ Oh, Archie, how lovely 
to hear your voice again ! ” 

Then, as if she did not know she had said that, 
as if she had not said it at all, she added, “ He took 
it away. I expect he forgot I’d want to come down 
again directly.” 

She turned, glanced up at the trap-door and 
around the stable. “ He had taken away the lad- 
der, you see.” 

, u I know. That’s not what I’m asking you. I 
want to know about this 4 Angus,’ ” retorted young 
Laverock in a voice that he himself had never 
heard. “ Is he that man who was — Are you — You 
are married to him now, I suppose? ” 

Swept away from before him was the dim brown 
velvet gloom of the stable, stabbed by the shaft of 
light that made a glory of her hair. Swept away, 
the glimpse, through the door, of sunset-sky, of 
stable-yard, of Highland field, of fishing-loch with 
boat at anchor by the reeds. Swept away, as com- 
pletely were all those years of Archie’s life up to 
now, and any memory that was not of her, any 
other face. Nothing remained in his consciousness 


294 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


but that Flame, and this question on which it 
seemed his life now hung. 

“ Are you? ” 

She said blankly, “What?” 

“ Aren’t you? ” 

She turned upon him that strange, sleepwalker’s 
face. In the absent tone of one who, occupied, an- 
swers the question of some child, she replied, “ But 
Angus is the herd.” 

“ The what? ” feverishly. 

“ The little herd. The boy that looks after ” 

She laughed a little, saying, less bewilderedly, 
“He’s only twelve.” 

“ Twelve? ” 

“ Yes, or thirteen.” She still smiled ; a more nat- 
ural expression began to dawn over her adorable 
face. “ What made you imagine — Did you say, 
was I married?” 

“You’re not?” These were the two words he 
uttered; behind them, the volume of all he felt. 
Still he swayed on that plane beyond the physical, 
yet thrillingly of it; beyond the actual. All he 
could say, again — “ You’re not? ” 

He took no step forward as he said it. He did 
not move an arm. Both hands were now clenched 
at his sides. Only, he widened and turned more 
directly upon her his eyes ; his bright, quickly-mov- 
ing, uncertain coloured eyes that had so often held 
so many faces in their regard. 

That held her now. Held her, surely as a close 
embrace, so that again she caught a sudden breath. 
She drew backward. She moved her lips as if to 
say “ Don’t.” No sound came from them. 

But it was no longer the face of dreaming sleep 


THE ELLIPTICAL INTERVIEW 295 


that she turned upon him. It was the face of one 
who forces back rapture with incredulity. 

He, exultantly, “ You aren’t married.” 

“ No.” 

“ You were engaged to be married, though, all 
that time ago. I remember. You were engaged.” 

“ Yes, I was.” 

“ You aren’t any more! ” 

“ No.” Then she lifted the head on which the 
last of the sunset rioted and ran : “ Why? Why do 
you ask? ” A thrill of defiance in her voice. 

Only that look of his answered her. More 
clearly than any spoken syllables it declared 
u You’re mine.” 

— Ah, wild elliptical moments when nothing is 
said, when everything is happening ! At such mo- 
ments the lives of mortals, their points-of-view, 
their Fate itself changes, transforms, transmutes 
even as cloud-shapes before the breeze of sundown. 

But immediately before the man’s kindling eyes 
the girl’s face altered also. All gently but surely 
it assumed the look of Everyday, the Barrier. . . . 

Quietly, protestingly, Ethel Johnstone spoke. 
“ You know, we can’t go on like this.” 

With his eyes fastened upon her, striving to call 
back her other look of a moment before, Archie 
Laverock muttered fervently, “ Why not ? ” 

She looked away; shook her head. “We can’t 
go on like this. People — well ! can’t” she re- 
peated very low. “ Please ! ” 

Low-voiced and in leash, but how eager ! he mut- 
tered, “ I see no earthly reason why not. Look 
here. I’ve got miles to say to you ” 

“ Not now.” 


296 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


“ Yes ! Now ! ” he persisted, still in that throaty 
whisper which a lover would use in the desert 
with no ear but that of the beloved within miles. 
Is it the dread of eavesdropping Fate? Or that, 
half-muted, Love’s accent gains mastery? 

“ r Never pester ’ ” was (Archie knew) the golden 
rule. He must stick to that. . . . But found him- 
self pestering! 

“ Please,” he urged. “ Oh, I say, please ” 

Across that lover’s-whisper cut the sound of a 
voice, a strident authoritative feminine voice, 
calling outside, calling across the little Loch. 

“Miss Johnstone!” (Crescendo;) “Miss John - 
stone! ” 

The girl pulled herself together and turned like 
a cat. Consternation, amusement, wrath and re- 
lief, ran up their signals in her face. 

“ Good Heavens ! ” she cried out. “ I must 
fly ” 

* “ Miss Johnstone! ” 

She dashed out of the stable, flew across the 
yard; with a whisk of brown skirt above neat 
stockings she was over the fence into the first of 
the two fields that separated the lodge from the 
Castle. 

Archie Laverock stood at the stable-door; the 
last flash of her marigold-flaming hair in his eyes 
and in his ears her hastily uttered, “ There’s to- 
morrow, perhaps. Good-niglit ! ” 

A night sleepless enough was before the young 
man. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 

WHITE NIGHT — AND DAYLIGHT 

“ Je ne t’ai jamais dit celte chose inoiiie: 

Lorsque je t’apergus, pour la premiere fois, 

Je ne vis d’sibord que tu etais jolie, 

Je pris a peine garde a toi.” 

— Paul Geraldy. 

B ETWEEN the fine-woven, soft-washed High- 
land sheets young Laverock, chauffeur to 
the Castle Party, lay restless through hours 
of summer darkness. 

He had not so sleeplessly tossed since he had 
been Captain A. L. Laverock, with the nature of 
his wounds, his temperature, and other records 
written on a square of cardboard hung above his 
cot in that spacious corniced drawing-room that 
became a ground-floor Hospital ward. 

Hospital memories ! How they came back to him 
now! 

Tall windows, looking out on to the Square and 
the London plane-trees whose soot-blackened 
trunks, patched with light colour where bark had 
peeled off, make them look as if leopards were 
climbing those trees. (Or so he’d fancied, lying 
there, staring out.) Lines of cots. Red-panelled 
screens. Matron’s watchful face. Passing figures 
of trim-belted, aproned nurses. 

Her figure. 

Clearly as he’d seen her tweeds in the stables a 
few hours ago, he now saw her as she’d looked in 
297 


298 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


her trim uniform. The Red Cross, curving over 
her young breast. Her heels, reflected downwards 
in the polished parquet as she stepped up to his 
cot. 

He remembered her demurely-rallying tone, the 
first time that she had ever spoken to him. 

“ This basket of peaches and these lovely roses 
have been sent in for Captain Laverock. I expect 
there’s a card somewhere; I didn’t look. I’ll put 
them on the locker here, shall I ? ” 

“ Thank you, Nurse ” 

(Like that.) 

Then, some days later, “If you are going out 
this afternoon, I’ll fetch you up those new socks 
and things early, so that you will have plenty of 
time to dress.” 

“ Thanks awfully.” 

(Just like that!) 

He had gone out for the first time, that after- 
noon, to tea. One of those parsimoniously-rationed 
teas at the Piccadilly when absence of sugar was 
made up for by de Groot’s music, by Air Force 
flirtations. Archie had been taken there in her car 
by some woman. He forgot, now, which she’d 
been. That day he hadn’t given a thought to the 
red-gold rogue who had been left on duty in the 
Ward; she might have been part of the Hospital 
furniture. He, Laverock, hadn’t thought of her. 
Incredible. 

Afterwards, though, afterwards he must have 
noticed her all right. “ ‘ Our Ginger ’ ” He didn’t 


WHITE NIGHT — AND DAYLIGHT 299 


remember the first time he’d heard that nickname, 
nor which of them had given it to her. But he 
remembered how popular she had been in the ward 
and how that hair of hers, even under her cap, had 
fairly lighted up the place. 

He remembered a Kaid-night in Hospital. The 
Alarm at midnight. The high-pitched drone over 
London of enemy planes. Men and nurses coming 
down from the wards on upper floors. The Bridge 
four of wounded; himself, “ Navy ” (that little 
fellow from the bed on the left of the main doors 
of the ward as you faced it from inside), a gunner 
with one leg and a fellow named Jones. Playing 
by candle-light, as the shrapnel whistled over the 
roof. Getting warmed up to the game. Being told 
to go back to bed now. No sooner had this been 
done than the wretched Huns had come over 
again, so that it was a quarter to three in the 
morning before the Hospital inmates turned 
in. . . . 

He remembered how the upstairs patients and 
the nurses sat on the stairs as if it had been at 
a dance. He, Archie, had gone one better; had 
found himself in the ward-kitchen brewing tea with 
“our Ginger.” Amusing, while it lasted. The 
night-sister, coming in and finding them, had given 
the girl a job of work and the patient marching- 
orders for bed. 

Another memory. Once, not long before he left 
the Hospital, she had tucked in an edge of his 
blankets with the gesture that she might have used 
over a tiny boy who kicks his bed-clothes all over 
the place. There had been just that look on her 


300 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


face. He, out of bravado or something, what was 
it? — He had snuggled his head back on the pil- 
low just as that tiny boy might have done. Then, 
burlesquing a baby manner, had put up his mouth 
and wheedled, “ Don’t I get . . . said good- 
night to? ” 

There was only the gunner major in the next 
cot who could have seen this, and he was deep in 
Eve. 

The girl had looked down quietly. Had then 
smiled. Had replied in her bright even voice, 
“ Good-night, Captain Laverock ! ” . . . 

He broke off that memory, here, to turn again on 
his bed, to plunge his fist into his bolster, setting 
his teeth. 

Lord, Lord, Lord! he had got it in the neck! 
Hadn’t he been warned that some day he would get 
it in the neck? 

Out of the Past — out of some forgotten conver- 
sation somewhere — phrases seemed to repeat them- 
selves in his wakeful brain. 

“ Fate may have one rather cruel thing in store 
for you, Archie. ... Of course you’ll always , al- 
ways he spoilt hy women. They’ll run after you; 
pamper you; idolize you. . . . Yes! Because you 
are a beautiful and a passionate hoy. Because 
you’ll know what eight out of ten men don’t learn 
— How to look at women , how to speak to them, 
how to touch them. Almost any woman will he 
ready to adore you. You’ll begin to take that for 

granted. But! Later on You’ll pay. You’ll 

meet the one girl who’s different from every other 
girl and who will show you that you’ve never seen 
<a girl before ” 


WHITE NIGHT— AND DAYLIGHT 301 

Ah! How infernally true. . . . Just what had 
happened; just! Relentless memory, thought, 
dread, whatever it was, concluded that prophecy. 

“And then Then Perhaps she won’t care 

two straws for your good looks , your passion , your 
charm. She may he the one woman who won’t 
want you. She probably won’t look at you! ” 

Good Lord, thought Archie, wretched; tossing 
again. Ghastly show Life was! 

But she had looked? She looked at him in the 
stable? She’d cried out, “ Oh, Archie, how lovely 
to hear your voice again ...” 

Wasn’t that — 

Ah, no. Might mean anything or nothing. Noth- 
ing, decided Archie Laverock (this was at the pes- 
simistic hour of two, a.m.). She was merely 
amused to see an old patient, never even thought 
of since Nineteen Seventeen. 

He remembered his good-byes at the Hospital, 
and how he’d blued nearly a fiver at Marny’s on 
gifts for Matron and the V.A.D.’s who had looked 
after him. Nurse Johnstone had come in for the 
big bottle of Mysterieuse perfume; because he’d 
caught a whiff of that scent about her once when 
she’d come in early after her two hours out. 

She’d said, lightly, “ Oh, how nice of you ! ” 

And he, “ To keep my memory sweet, don’t you 
know! That is, if it lasts as long as the bottle. 
Good-bye ! ” 

Airily: just like that. How could he! 

Now he was making up for it, by Jove. . . •• 
He continued, in this way, to make up for it until 
morning dawned. . . . 


302 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


Some men —perfectly male, sporting, lighting 
men — have in their natures (possibly inherited 
from the woman who bore them, possibly caught 
from women who loved them), a purely feminine 
streak. This allows them to fall hopelessly in love, 
and yet at the same time to detach themselves 
from Love; so that Love has to wait ignored until 
a hundred little mundane interests have ceased to 
occupy the mind. 

So it is with women — in spite of that conscien- 
tious male fiction about Woman’s whole existence! 
and so it was now with Mr. Archie Laverock. 

He woke, after barely three hours’ sleep; and 
when he woke he was immune from the shock and 
miracle of that moment when he had found Ethel 
Johnstone suddenly in his arms. 

You cannot live Life for long on that thrilling, 
overcharged, electrical plane! Society is not con- 
structed for that sort of thing. One or other 
would (sometimes does) go crash. 

So this young man swung round to the other 
extreme. He woke, wondering where he was and 
how he had come to be in this little chintz-papered 
room with snowy curtains blowing in at the case- 
ment? 

Remembering, he sprang out of bed and thrust 
his head out of the window into air the like of 
which he had never before tasted. North of Scot- 
land air straight off the unsullied Atlantic. 

Thrusting his feet into brogues, he hustled on 
a Burberry and dashed out, down to the shore, 
for a dive off the rocks. In icy bracing water he 
seemed to slough off everything but “ the needs of 


WHITE NIGHT— AND DAYLIGHT 303 

a world of men.” As he rubbed himself down, he 
glanced about him. . . . 

Wide coast. . . . Shelving rocks, layer upon 
layer like a giant’s platter of brown bread-and- 
butter. . . . Beaches, of white chipped shell and. 
black wrack, made a slender barrier between two 
seas; the sea of tossing green waters, the sea of 
faintly undulating purple heather. . . . Towering 
over both seas, the immensity of fresh, dove- 
coloured sky. Into that sky the Castle thrust 
turrets grim as the visors of ancient helmets. The 
whole landscape — austere, invigorating — had some 
quality that seemed to make him stiffen his back- 
bone, lift his head another inch. 

“ Some place ! ” said Archie. 

All braced, he ran back to breakfast and his 
morning’s work. 

To describe that work in detail would require 
the pen of the zestful writer who fills the “ Petrol 
Vapour ” columns of The Tatler week by week. 

. . . Imagine, therefore, the condition of four 
cars after six hundred miles of running. Imagine 
as you can the busy commotion of yards outside 
the garages ; the overhaulings, burrowings into 
bonnets, tightenings, testings, consultations with 
other hirelings, runnings hither and thither of the 
boy Angus; imagine the hissing hoses, clanking 
buckets, moppings, swabbings, polishings. Also 
the appearance, in those streaming yards, of one 
or other of the men of The Party; and the orders 
for which young Laverock had such punctilious 
“ Sirs ” and cap-touchings. 

Left alone, Archie, thoroughly into his job, 


304 : 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


whistled gaily; broke mechanically into song — not 
placing at the moment whose song or where he 
last had heard it — 

“ ‘ Oh, your hair is the colour of burnished gold 
That’s lit by the setting sun 

“ Angus ! A couple more cans, and stack these 
empties away — 

u ‘ but it’s sweeter, far sweeter undone! 

Then loosen those tresses and let them fall 
Your snow-white shoulders o’er * 

“ Ha, thank you, my boy. 

‘ But I ivish I could think that nobody else ■’ ” 

End of verse drowned in the swishing of many 
waters. 

These, it is said, cannot quench Love; but still 
he was detached enough. . . . 

Hair like burnished gold! . . . Rum coinci- 
dence his being up here with her. She as the guest 
in the Shooting-party; heavily chaperoned by the 
Admiral’s sister, most probably. He, chauffeur-in- 
chief of the Admiral’s sister’s husband’s Set. 
Chances were he wouldn't even see enough of Ethel 
Johnstone to exchange another word with her. 

He began to speculate. . . . Upon no tenderer 
subject than To-morrow’s Bag. 

No extremes last. Hence Life, as lived. Having 
touched both extremes, Archie Laverock settled 
down to the normal. 


WHITE NIGHT— AND DAYLIGHT 305 


At tea in his little lodge (a matchless Scots tea 
of new-laid eggs, scones, home-made bramble jelly, 
honey, and toast), he wondered where and when 
he should see her again. Began guessing at oppor- 
tunities. Thence he passed to contriving a meeting. 

She would probably go out with the guns? 
Could it happen that she sat in the front of the 
car? Supposing she wanted to be driven to the 
nearby town (fifteen miles away)? Or if she had 
to be run up in a hurry to send off a wire at the 
post-office? 

For, of course, he must see her. Of course, he 
must have it out with her ! . . . 

Have what out? 

That question seemed, all in a moment, to answer 
itself. 

Through the open door of the lodge, he heard a 
commotion of treble voices clamouring, drawing 
nearer. Children’s voices ! Once, during the day, 
he had idly wondered what had become of the 
nursery-party that he knew to be in the house. 
Apparently they had all been spirited away from 
the other Party, put into somebody’s charge. 

Suddenly, as the distant chorus grew nearer, he 
heard shrill repetitions of a name. 

“ Miss Johnstone — Miss Johnstone ! ” Then 
“ It’s her turn to scout us out, Miss Johnstone ” 

Without haste but with set purpose Archie Lave- 
rock rose from his chair and his half -achieved tea, 
and walked out. 

He crossed the bit of shelly gravel in front of 
his lodge, passed througli a wooden gate leading 
into the first of the stone-fenced fields, from the 
direction in which those voices had come. Fleeing 


306 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


from before his advance lie caught a glimpse of 
jerseys and frocks, of flying hair and long legs. 
Then one of those children, doubling and turning, 
flew towards Archie, collided with and bounced oil 
him, exclaiming excitedly — 

“ Hello, Laverock ! ” 

“ Hello, Royds,” retorted Archie, recognizing his 
small companion of the journey North. “ What 
are you up to? ” 

“ We’re an ambush,” the little boy told him in 
excited whisper. “ At least, they are. I’m rein- 
forcements. The others are going into that little 
wood-place down by the drive, I think. I shall do 
the snake-formation round here. You know we’re 
all hiding from my cousins’ nurse ” 

“ Poor woman ; who’s she? ” 

“ She isn’t a poor woman, Laverock. She’s Miss 
Johnstone.” 

“Miss — What?” Archie shouted; grabbing the 
grey worsted of the boy’s Wolf-cub jersey, lettered 
on the shoulder with the name of his pack. “ Miss 
Johnstone is what? ” 

“ Nurse to my little cousins. But not a bit 
stodgy” the child assured him. “ I say, let me go, 
Laverock! She’s down there on the other side of 
the wall. She’s going to hide her eyes while she 
counts a hundred, so that she doesn’t see where we 
all get to. She’s really quite honourable for a 
girl,” declared the little fellow, wriggling away. 

Before the last words had left the child’s mouth, 
young Laverock had vaulted the stone fence, had 
then stepped softly down the grass path to where 
that girl stood. 

The first sight of her brought it all back upon 


WHITE NIGHT— AND DAYLIGHT 307 

him. All the shock, miracle, delight, longing of 
the evening before. 

There she stood. Again she was all in brown; 
warm leaf -colour. Her uncovered hair was bright 
as a head of turning bracken against the grey, sun- 
less sky. She stood, supple and superbly uncon- 
scious, her hands up against her eyes. Beneath 
showed her lips; made more vivid and expressive 
as lips seen under a mask! her laughing parted 
lips that counted aloud, “ Ninety-seven, ninety- 
eight, ninety-nme ” 

“ A hundred,” finished Archie quietly, a foot 
from her. 

She dropped her hands. Had the “ hundred” 
been his touch on her parted lips she could not have 
fallen more swiftly back. For the second time in 
twenty-four hours they were staring straight into 
each other’s eyes. 

“ Oh ! ” she cried, angrily. “ How dared you ! ” 

“ I didn’t,” he said. “ Just what I didn’t.” 

“What do you mean?” She coloured vividly. 
“ I mean, what do you mean by startling me like 
that again? ” 

“Again?” he said, gaining time. 

“ Yes — Well, last night was an accident, I know, 
but you came up just now, quietly, on purpose. 

“ Yes, I know I did.” 

,, “ Mean of you ! Taking me by surprise! ” 

“ Yes.” 

“Letting me shout straight into your face like 
that! ” 

“ Yes ; it was so lovely,” said Archie Laverock 
quickly. “ You don’t know what you looked like. 
If you knew how beautiful you were — I don’t care 


308 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


if you’re angry with me or not — you are angry, but 
I don’t care ! If you knew, you’d have forgiven me 
for doing anything ” 

She turned quickly. 

“ You aren’t going ” protested Archie hotly, 

“ before I’ve said anything or asked anything at 
all! You can’t go!” 

And he held her with his eyes, the petulant, 
wrathful, high-spirited, red-haired girl that she 
was; he held her with that look that he’d learnt 
half-consciously to use; it served him now as it 
had never served him before and he felt that this, 
this was all for which he’d want to possess any at- 
traction, any power. . . . 

“ I must go. But, of course, I’ve got to go ! ” 
she cried, halting before him. “ Oh — I forgot to 
ask — How’s the shoulder, Captain Laverock? ” 

“ I don’t use it, you know.” 

“ What? ” Quick concern in her voice and face. 
“ The shoulder ” 

“ No; the ‘ Captain.’ ” 

“ Oh ! It’s ‘ Mr. Laverock,’ then.” 

“ Last night,” he said, very softly, “ it was 
6 Archie. ’ ” 

“ Oh ! ” She flung out a flippancy. ' Surely 
not? ” 

“ Surely.” 

“ In the — the first glad moment of surprise, 
perhaps? ” 

“ Doesn’t it last, then? ” 

“ No moments last! ” said this girl. 

“ You’re wrong,” said Archie Laverock. “ That’s 
just what — some moments — do.” 


WHITE NIGHT— AND DAYLIGHT 309 


Her vivid bead moved this way and that, but 
always she looked away from him. After a second’s 
silence she said more ordinarily, “ Well, good-bye ; 
for really I must go; I have to.” 

He thought very swiftly. “ Yes,” he agreed, “ I 
suppose you have to. How soon do I see you 
again? ” 

She asked, in a desperate little rush, “ Don’t you 
think it would be as well if you didn’t see me? ” 
“ No,” he said with decision, “ I don’t. When 
do I see you to talk to, and where? ” 

She evaded. “ Well, as we’re both here, we’re 

sure to be coming across one another ” 

“ Do you know,” he said pleasantly, smiling into 
her face, “ that wmuld be awfully little use to 


“Miss John-stone ” came faintly over the 

fields. 

“ Oh, listen ! They’re calling me! ” 

“Very well; as soon as you’ve told me where? 
When? ” 

She hesitated. “ It can’t be before the children 
are all put to bed. And after that — Well, it can’t.” 

“ If it can’t be before it’s got to be after,” said 
the man logically. 

“ I don’t think I can at all.” 

“ This evening? ” said he. 

“ No, I don’t think possible ” 

“At eight o’clock? Have you dined by then?” 

“ I have my dinner brought up at eight.” 

“ At eight-thirty, then,” he concluded. “ Right ! ” 

She gave a curious little laugh, made a gesture 
as if she called the whole wide landscape and grey 


310 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


heavens to behold the persistence of this creature. 

He added, quickly, firmly, “ Now, where? I’ll 
tell you ” 

He told her of the lane to the shore, down which 
he had rushed that morning to get his dip. . . . 
They parted. . . . 

That evening, there they met for their first walk 
and talk. 

That was the evening before The Twelfth. . . . 

— In three evenings from then, Mr. Archie 
Laverock found himself something that he never 
before had been in the course of his varied career — 
definitely engaged to be married. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 

THREE DAYS’ WOOING 

“ Happy’s the wooing that’s not long a-doing.” 

— Saying. 

T HOSE three first evenings of their meeting 
divided themselves into three definite 
moods. 

Through all of them young Laverock was keenly 
conscious of one quality in this wooing; one was 
the keynote of his attitude to her. As he put 
it, “When she is not there , I’m rational enough. 
I think, ‘ Now, look here! Let’s pull ourselves 
together. What about all this? Mightn’t it be 
all another wretched mistake? ’ But, as soon as 
I see her — IT ! ” 

Could it be because she was, incidentally, a dozen 
different girls in one? 

At that first evening’s rendezvous there met him 
a young woman who certainly had pulled herself 
together, who w T as suddenly all breeziness and 
amusement and good-fellowship; Our Ginger, in 
fact, who barred sentiment. 

“ Good-evening ! ” she hailed him pleasantly. u I 
say, d’you think this is quite what used to be 
called ‘ The Thing ’ — Walking out with the 
Shover? ” 

He grinned, following her lead. “ You know 
about it, do you? ” 


311 


312 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


“ Of course. Little Freddie Royds has been full 
of ‘ Laverock ’ all day.” 

u Has he? Well; it was little Freddie Royds 
who told me that you were the nursery-maid here. 
Really I don’t see that you’ve much caste to lose, 
Miss, even if you do walk out with the Shover,” 
said Archie cheerfully. “ We’ll take the path along 
the cliff, shall we? ” 

“ Right.” They swung along together in the 
gradual, the long-drawn-out Northern gloaming. 
“ Now do tell me what you’ve been doing since 
you left the Hospital.” 

Archie Laverock told her briefly of his Boards, of 
his War Office job that lasted until demobilization, 
of his two years with The Firm. 

“ Did they send you up here? ” she asked. 

“ No. I’d left, then. A man suggested my com- 
ing up here to take the place of ” and so on. 

“ How long for? ” 

“ A month or so. Then I’m going abroad.” 

If he hoped that she might show any sign of 
dismay at this, he was disappointed. She merely 
said, “ Oh, how sensible ” and made some re- 

mark about cousins of hers who rushed back to 
the Colonies the instant they doffed khaki. Fol- 
lowed talk on the Labour situation and the new 
angle from which these representatives of the New 
Poor must now view it. 

Talk about Ethel Johnstone’s own job. 

“ No more sick nursing for me,” declared Our 
Ginger. “ I don’t wish to see another ill person 
as long as I live. So I put in for a post as Games- 
Mistress. Wildly expensive and Co-Ed. place. 
Do you care for Co-Edueation? Personally I’m 


THREE DAYS’ WOOING 313 

afraid I’m too modern,” she laughed. “ I think 
it’s all tosh. Said as much. Still, they took me. 
Then, these holidays it was a choice between going 
to my step-mother’s at Worthing, which I loathe^ 
and answering an advertisement, and coming up 
North as menial to the Hopkinson-Kobes.” 

“ Do you like this ” 

“ Oh, I’ve always liked brats. And the place is 
heavenly, don’t you think so? ” 

“ I do now,” replied Archie with intention, tak- 
ing his eyes from the darkening horizen to fix them 
on what he could see of her face, dim above the 
collar of her driving-coat. 

She was not to be drawn into personalities this 
evening! She chattered on as it might have been 
a school-girl chattering from a heart light as a 
feather and void of preoccupation or responsibility. 

“ The whole thing’s a joke really. My being here 
as Nana. “ Your being here as the chauffeur out 
of ‘ The Grain of Mustard Seed/ These people 
being here at all ! ” 

“The Party, you mean?” 

“ Yes, them. Sir Kobe and Mr. Obe and their 
Set. You know I call them that,” explained the 
girl, “because of the K. B. E.’s and O. B. E.’s 
sprayed all over them. Haven’t they done well out 
of the War? Well, I suppose if it hadn’t been for 
their making pumps and pistol-rods and shells and 
vegetable ration for our relations, there wouldn’t 
have been any War to speak of and we’d have had 
the Prussians enjoying this shooting instead of 
Mr. Obe and Co. They’re really awfully good- 
natured. And it is about time they had their 
turn. ... If England must change hands, I don’t 


314 THE ARRANT ROYER 

so much mind Sir Kobe getting a slab of it; he’s 
a dear.” 

“ He’s the man with the tank whisky-flask, isn’t 
he? The Admiral’s sister’s husband? ” 

“ Is he? Yes, I believe Lady Kobe has a brother 
an Admiral. Of course, her being here with them 
is part of the joke. She doesn’t notice anything; 
wonderful technique. Just before dinner she and 
Mrs. Senior-Obe were saying Good-night to the 
children. Mrs. Senior in such a frock. She said, 
‘Yes, my dear i; fifty-six guineas at Reville’s. I 
don’t mind telling you I never saw the Inside of 
Reville’s before the War, but now we’ve GOT the 
dibs why shouldn’t If ’ — I say, aren’t we retailing 
all the upstairs gossip in a Staff -like manner? — 
And isn’t it funny to think that this Castle should 
be a perfectly different world to everybody in it? 

“ You see, there’s the real owner’s Castle. Home, 
to them. All these beautiful old portraits in the 
dining-room — Oh, of course, you’ve never entered 
the sacred precincts, ‘ Laverock’? Well, all those 
old Holbeins and Gainsboroughs mean Great- 
Grandfather This and Aunt That, to them. Gen- 
eration after generation of associations and rec- 
ords and romance, to them. To them, it’s Revolu- 
tion because they’ve had to let the place to ” 

“ Our employers ! ” 

. . . “ The,” she said, “ there’s ‘ The Castle ’ to 
Babs’s mother; Mrs. Hopkinson-Kobe.” Her fresh 
voice assumed a dramatic mincing tone. “ ‘ Oh, my 
dears, what a frightful place; six or seven thou- 
sand pounds before it would be even barely 
habitable! Imagine, just imagine having a tin- 
bath in one’s room, going off like a pistol-shot every 


THREE DAYS’ WOOING 315 

time one sits down in it, and no electric-light any- 
where , having to take a bed-room candle- stick, yes ! 
with a candle in it, waving in the wind down those 
miles of piercing corridors on your way to bed! 
As for central heating, no human soul in these 
wilds has ever heard of such a thing — isn’t it a 
scream, isn’t it a perfect yell ? And the furniture, 
isn’t it a night-mare f All the carpets and wall- 
papers spotted and speckled with hideous designs, 
and the perfect flock of magenta sheep that must 
have been made into these rugs down every passage 
and in front of every door. Still, I suppose one 

will survive a month of it ’ Well! As long 

as we can retain our light-hearted girlish 
mirth 

The mimic paused for breath. The man at her 
side put in softly : “ And my Castle? And yours? ” 

Not to be drawn ! “ And the children’s Castle,” 
said she. “ Quite a different place again. Pure 
Grimms’ Fairy Tales and Peter Pan and their 
history-lessons all mixed-up. Then there’s the 
men’s Castle. Moors all day and Bridge half the 
night, but endless talk of marks and dollars and 
exchange, the whole time. . . . Are any of them 
very good shots? You don’t know? . . . You’ll 
just drive them out and fetch them again at five — 
Won’t you long to get a gun into your hand, 
i Laverock ’ ? ” 

He was baffled; he could not lure or surprise 
her this evening away from that plane of laughing 
good-fellowship. Was this th$ girl who had cried 
out at the first sight of him in the stable, who 
had blushed under his eyes in the field? That was 
the girl he wanted; this laughing rogue as well.j 


316 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


His whole heart was singly set upon her as they 
tramped home again through the darkness, sprin- 
kled with dimly veiled stars, shafted with shifting 
gleams from the liglit-house on the grim headland 
behind them. Oh, magic evening. 

A waste, thought the fuming Archie; a sinful 
waste. Never, never before (in comparison) had 
he looked upon beauty as setting for a love- 
scene. . . . Why could he not tell her at once all 
that seethed in his heart? . . . 

But with the morning cool reflection came 
(“ After all, there’s nothing in it. Just good 
pals.” ) — and the day’s work. 

The Twelfth. . . . 

To young Laverock this was not to be dwelt 
upon. He was, as it happened, an excellent shot; 
he hankered more than one may say for a day out 
with the dogs and the ghillies and the grou’ birds — 
out on the moors of purple and brown, under the 
bleak sweet grey. . . . 

“ I won the sweep,” he was told by Freddie 
Royds late in the afternoon. “ Thirty brace. And 
there was a hare and a snipe.” 

“ Good,” said the shirt-sleeved chauffeur. Ab- 
surd to hanker like this after what wasn’t his busi- 
ness any more. . . . 

Sport and Love, too, were barred for the New 
Paupers. . . . 

Just as well. Waste of time thinking of 
either. . . . 

Still . . . 

Evening brought them once more together; his 


THREE DAYS’ WOOING 317 

body, soul, and spirit seemed to exult again. 
" It / " 

He gave her the bunch of white heather that he 
had found that afternoon on his way to fetch the 
sportsmen. She tucked it into the breast of her 
coat with quite a casual “ Thank you.” This eve- 
ning she was not so much the good pal, he dis- 
covered, as teasing, ready to pick holes in things 
as they were. ... He did not know how it arose ; 
presently she was ragging him about some other 
white heather that she remembered had been sent 
in to him in Hospital; a growing plant of white 
heather in a pot shaped like a black cat. . . . 

That ought to have brought him lots of luck, she 
supposed; and, still dwelling on Hospital days, 
she ragged him again about “ the stream ” of 
peaches and roses that used to flow his way. . . . 

“ Quite the belle of the ward ! More popular even 
than little Navy! ” she mocked him. “ We all re- 
member the lovely grey Rolls that used to come 
and fetch Captain Laverock out for an airing ” 

A light anger seemed to surge up in the young 
man beside her. He wanted to say something per- 
sonal, intrusive. . . . After all, he couldn’t turn 
to her and shake her as they w r alked along in the 
peaceful evening. . . . He said, without knowing 
he was going to say it, “ Perhaps you remember 
someone who used to come in a car and fetch yon 
out, those days? ” 

“ Yes, I do,” she retorted. “ I was engaged to 
be married to my car, you know.” 

This was an arrow into him; as was perhaps 
intended, Of course. She had been engaged to 


318 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


be married. Everybody in the Hospital knew that 
at the time. A somebody on the Staff. He used 
to come. . . . Archie remembered suddenly the 
engagement-ring there had been once ... on her 
finger. . . . Goldy-red flashing stones. Fire-opals 
to match her flaring hair. ... It hurt him to 
think of that. It hurt him! 

All he could think of to say was, “ How do you 
know that I was not engaged to be married 
myself? ” 

“ Oh ! You ! ” she mocked. “ I know you were 
not.” 

a You know?” 

“ Oh, people like you aren’t engaged. They 
think it would be taking a razor to chop fire-wood, 
for any of them to get married. They’d not 
be happy. They wouldn’t make anybody else 
happy ” 

“ They? D’you mean me t ” 

“ I mean your type.” 

“ You don’t know anything about me,” muttered 
Archie Laverock. “ What’s the good of talking 
about types? ” 

“ Oh ! Don’t I know anything about you ? Do 
you suppose I haven’t met people who knew you? 
Oh, yes, outside the Hospital. More people know 
the Disturbing Charmer than the Disturbing 
Charmer knows ” 

“ What rot,” he barked, reddening hotly in the 
gloom beside her. “ I beg your pardon, I didn’t 
mean to be rude ” 

“ Oh, I don’t mind at all. I’ll pretend you have 
a temperature, or that you’re coming to after 
chloroform ; the theatre with a patient coming out 


THREE DAYS’ WOOING 


319 


of the anaesthetic is hardly G. H. Q. politeness,” 
she tormented him. “ Come, I only mean you know 
you’ve the reputation of being frightfully popular 
and of having people simply falling at your feet 
like ninepins; don’t mind meeting just one — one 
who sees through you ! ” 

Yes ; how he would have loved to shake her ! To 
shake her, hard. . . . And through his hot anger 
there flowed an icy stream of dread; that torment- 
ing memory of what had been prophesied for him 
when he should meet the one girl in the world. 

(“ She’ll he the one woman who won’t want yon. 
She) probably , won’t look at yon!”) 

Ethel, now, laughed wickedly. He knew she 
was preparing something fresh to torment him. 
He braced himself for that. Also, he did some- 
thing else. He gave a queer, backward glance 
towards mind-pictures of other faces. Girls’ 
faces that had smiled upon him with kinder eyes. 
These seemed to give him encouragement, help; 
seemed? They did give. One cannot be so near 
to — yet gain nothing from — a Force. 

So now when this red-haired termagant who was 
his darling and his despair asked with that laugh 
of mischief : “ For instance, have you had what 
one might call a good summer? ” 

“ Oh, fairly,” answered (with a world of art- 
fully quiet retrospection in his tone) the lad who 
had so arrantly roved throughout May, June, and 
July. “Yes. Fairly good, thank you!” 

His score. 

She turned abruptly right about on the road. 

“ Time to go in,” said she, curtly. 

They had been barely a mile; it was still light 


320 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


enough to see the colours of things! but he made 
no demur walked back beside her. 

They scarcely talked, going back. 

At the head of the lane, where they had parted 
before, he said, “ Well, good-niglit. Thanks so 
much for taking pity on my solitary state up here. 
Er — I don’t. dare to ask you to come out for a 
stretch again, to-morrow evening? ” 

“ Why not?” she demanded* — quite carelessly. 

“ Oh, I thought you thought I’d been rude. . . . 
I thought you weren’t quite friends about some- 
thing. ...” 

“ Oh ! ” she disclaimed promptly, too promptly. 
“ Nothing of the kind. Of course, I’ll come for a 
walk; I enjoyed this. Good-night, Mr. Laverock! ” 

Another working-day . . . with business as 
before. . . . Another evening that washed out 
everything that had to do with The Party, the cars, 
the bag, the sweep, the activity of the strenuous 
day. Washed out everything but the grey gloaming 
that brought that bright-headed, superb young 
figure in the driving-coat to meet him by the lane 
and to tramp with him through the wide, 
mysterious-coloured, magic landscape of a dream. 

The feeling between them this evening was 
neither the comradeship of the first nor the quarrel 
of the second. Something waited, watched, fol- 
lowed upon their heels; something impended like 
a towering cloud blowing up over the sea — 
presaging storm. . . . 

The “ good-evenings ” exchanged, they walked. 
Inland, towards the sleeping moor that had been 
shot over to-day. For a mile they were silent. 
Then young Laverock, abruptly, as if he still spoke 


THREE DAYS* WOOING 


321 - 


out of the midst of yesterday’s conversation, began, 

“ Talking about being engaged to be married — 
D’you mind telling me why you broke your 
engagement off? ” 

Her engagement, her engagement! It was be- 
coming an obsession to him. Why should he mind 
about it, he asked himself. Then, continued to 
“ mind.” He minded, more than anything that had 
ever happened to him in his Rover’s-life until now’, 
the fact that she had once said she would marry 
another man — that she had been another man’s 
promised sweetheart. It hurt and hurt. 

It was intolerable! 

For, indeed, it now seemed to the man who had 
been the Rover that all his life he had w r aited to 
bring to this one girl an untouched heart. Para- 
doxical, if he came to examine it . . . but he w 7 as 
in no mood to examine anything. He was just 
sore. So badly it rankled and hurt that he — w T ho 
had had nothing that counted in his life until 
now — should go mad for a girl w r ho had been en- 
gaged to another man. Another man. ... It 
didn’t make it any more bearable that he wasn’t 
here now. There had been another man — she’d 
been engaged. 

The hated thought settled dowm upon him like 
the gathering night. 

She took his question as if it had been an accusa- 
tion. “ Plenty of people break their engagements 
off! What is the sense of being engaged if you 
don’t want to be? It’s like — Like sitting in the 
concert-hall for hours after the concert’s all fin- 
ished and the music’s all over and the lights are 
out and the seats are all covered up again w r ith 


322 THE ARRANT ROYER 

those brown holland shroud-things ! How could 
I go on? ” 

Archie Laverock, after a rapid unspoken whirl 
of thought, asked intently, “ Was it like that, to 
you? ” 

“ Yes ! If you must know ! ” she cried sharply. 

A second later she seemed to plead. “ How can 
a girl feel madly fond of somebody who’s so utterly 
devoted to her ” 

“ How t — can’t she? I don’t see that.” 

“ Men don’t see much. In Love, they see noth- 
ing ” she declared, breathlessly. “ If the man does 
all, all the devoted caring, it doesn’t give the girl — 
Well! Room to breathe! There’s no fun, to some 
of us, in being just cared for . It’s like — like going 
to a dance — and only watching. But then — Per- 
haps if you’re the wrong person you simply can’t 
do anything right ” 

It seemed to Archie Laverock that he was at- 
tentively listening, not only with all his ears but 
with every inch of his body. Listening, not only 
to what the girl said, but to a hundred voices that 
tilled the soft gloaming. 

Through these he responded quite prosaically, 
“Why did you get engaged to the fellow? ” 

“Oh! How should I know?” she cried, exas- 
perated as if over some age-gone irritation and 
weariness. “ Perhaps because it was a wet Sunday 
afternoon and I couldn’t play Bridge,” she cried, 
recklessly, “and because there seemed nothing 
else to do at the time ! ” 

Archie, intent — “ Then — Then it was always a 
one-sided show? ” 


THREE DAYS’ WOOING 823 

He waited for her answer. He expected that 
she would admit, “ Yes; always.” 

Somehow — Unreasonably, of course ! — He felt 
that he would be sorry if she did. He ought to 
be glad. 

But her answer rang out unexpectedly. “ Oh, 
no. Oh, no! I wouldn’t say that,” she declared, 
her voice rich and full of a generous contrition, 
sorrow, tenderness. “ It wasn’t always a one-sided 
show. I won’t let anyone think so. I think that’s 
mean. I think that’s abominably ungrateful, d’you 
know, to pretend a thing wasn’t wonderful once 
just because it isn’t wonderful now. That’s un- 
worthy. Nobody ought to be like that. I — I ought 
not to have said that about not having anything 
else to do. For I did care. I didn’t know how 
much I could care, but I cared all I knew for him, 
then ” 

In her earnestness she was quickening her foot- 
steps, she was forging ahead of Archie. 

But he caught her by the sleeve of her coat, 
dewy, moist, under his hand. 

“ Wait! ” he said peremptorily. “ Don’t go gal- 
loping on like that.” 

They halted. They had climbed to the top of a 
rise in the moor, and they now stood, black sil- 
houettes on the sky-line. Below their feet was the 
ocean of dusky, springy heather; above, a tiger- 
skin sky, sombrely streaked with yellow stripes — 
the last of the sunset. 

“ Wait ! ” he said again. “ There’s something I 
want to ask you.” 

His heart was hammering. The whole of his 


324 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


being was set in this that he was going to ask. 
He could not go on striding at her side and ask 
it. He didn’t even know that it was not a wild 
presumption that he asked it at ail. 

Yet — Yet — She had been engaged: (again 
the arrow sent rankling pains into him ) . Engaged 
in every way “ suitably ” ; happily. She said her- 
self that the beginning had been “ wonderful.” 
Perhaps all Love was to her — as Love had always 
been, through all his faults, to Archie Laverock, 
“ wonderful.” Without bitterness, he thought 
swiftly back again to past loves. There were 
none that he could not be proud of. He was grate- 
ful. They helped him — He thought they helped 
him now and here with this Love of all. For what 
a man puts into Love — that, in kind, is given back 
to him. 

The feminine streak in Archie, inherited and 
acquired, taught him to put together with light- 
ning swiftness details that told. . . . 

Her engagement; at first a success. Then the 
man, because he was “ the wrong person ” able to 
do “ nothing right.” Why had he — that Staff- 
fellow, devoted, well-off, nice fellow — become for 
her “ the wrong person ”? 

Then, another Hospital memory. Treasure to 
Archie now, like some long-held bill that has at 
last matured. A look of hers, once when she was 
going out of the ward and when she had thought 
his eyes were shut. They might just as well have 
been shut. Why hadn’t he seen what that look 
meant? Her uniformed body had left the ward, 
but all the rest of her had remained behind, with 
Archie Laverock. . . . 


325 


THREE DAYS’ WOOING 

Could it be ? 

Her cry, two days ago : " Oh , Archie , how lovely 
to hear your voice again ” 

He’d risk it on that. 

So he asked just what he’d asked before. 

“ Why did you break your engagement off? ” 

In the last of the light he caught her eyes. 

They seemed to say, “ ‘ Why? ’ ” 

Why? Wasn’t it impossible not to break every- 
thing, except The Better Dream? She had had 
to break. Even without any chance or hope of 
what had now, after years, come to her at last; 
this evening of lowering skies, of bleak sweet air, 
wild moor, and him. 

“ Was it that?” he whispered joyously. And 
then without waiting for another word from her, 
he caught her in his arms. He held her with the 
strength of steel, gathered her superb young body 
close, close, and made an odd little sound — the 
grunt of triumph given by the child who in some 
game has chased and overtaken and captured some 
other child. 

“ Hah — ” muttered the boy. 

The girl’s breath, too, came out in a quick gasp. 
Suddenly she seemed to give a little collapse of 
utter joy against his breast. Half-wrathful still, 
lialf-raptured, laughing, she flung out a smothered 
“ What’s the good of asking questions when you 
know ” 


CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 

NINE DAYS’ WONDEE 

<f Je te poursuis, je te tourmente, je te gronde . . . 

Tu serais plus heureuse, et mieux aimee alors, 

Si tu n’etais pour moi tout ce qui compte au monde, 

Et si ce pauvre amour n’etaic mon seul souci.” 

T HAT engagement between Miss Ethel John- 
stone and Mr. Archie Laverock was broken 
off again after just nine days. 

It was not until then that the mischief actually 
occurred, with the arrival of That Letter. . . . 
Who could have imagined that it would have — 
But perhaps better give some account of the 
nine-days’-wonder of that engagement while it 
lasted, taking the days in order as they came? 

The First Day. Young Laverock made feverish 
activity during the daylight hours act as a counter- 
irritant to his impatience for evening to come. 
Proud, conscious, and even shy — their first meet- 
ing as betrothed lovers! They wandered, very 
slowly shorewards. 

Archie said, “ I say, darling ” It was the 

first time he had said it to her; both were acutely 
aware of the fact, but neither moved an eyelash — 
“ I say, darling, haven’t you got any people or 
anything that I ought to write and tell — about 
US?” 

“ Not a soul, Archie. There’s my step-mother — 
Lady Castleton — but why drag her in? She didn’t 

326 


NINE DAYS’ WONDER 327 

tell me when she was going to marry again. So 
I’m quite alone in the world.” 

“ Cheers. So am I.” 

“ You mean you haven’t got anybody, either, to 
trot me out for, ‘ to inspect ’? ” 

“ Nobody — No relations left. No real friends. 
Crowds of people I just know. They won’t count.” 

“ Oh, Archie, how ideal ! ” exclaimed the fiancee. 
“ It makes it so much more wonderful, having no 
criticism and sordid comments ! ” 

Young Laverock, with his arm about her, glanced 
backwards at the visor-towers of the Castle, loom- 
ing above the stone fence, the field of oats, the 
sunk fence, the grassfield. 

“ You don’t think The Party had better ” 

“ Oh, no, please ! ” begged the girl. “ Part of the 
joke that they don’t. Why should they have any 
glimmering who their chauffeur’s engaged to? ” 

“ Their chauffeur might be so proud, dearest, of 
what he’s pulled off,” insinuated Archie Laverock, 
“ he might be dying to tell somebody! ” 

“ He can tell me. He can’t tell me too often,” 
she whispered. “ Nobody else! ” 

The Second Day. This was when the Event was 
made public. In the later afternoon one of Ethel’s 
“ brats,” having secretly gorged small sweet late 
strawberries on the top of her immense nursery- 
tea, developed a bilious attack. Her nurse, leaving 
her in bed with a hot-water bottle to her small 
centre and a Highland maid on guard, dashed out 
for a moment to the garage to break the news that 
there could be no tryst that evening. 

“Oh! But — Look here!” ejaculated young 


328 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


Laverock in dismay, standing there all oil and 
dust from wrist to elbow. “ Oh, blow that Kid! ” 

“ She’s blown herself out quite enough as it 
is,” announced Our Ginger — never mealy-mouthed. 
“ Shall have to stop and see her through it, poor 
mite ” 

“What about poor Me? Darling, you’ve no 
idea — I’ve just been living for half -past eight! 
Can’t you slip out later? Just for one second?. 
If I came to the bottom of the oakfield at the back 
there. Just to say Good-night? Do, angel-child! 
Have a heart ! Ah ! do ! ” 

Velvet-and-honey-and-music of his courting voice! 
She gave a small fluttering laugh. “ Well ” 

“ You will ! You will ! ” 

“ I will if I possibly can — But it’s not 

likely ! ” 

“ Then say Good-night to me now. (Not that it 
lets you off the other if there’s a dog’s chance.) 
Say it provisionally ” 

The pretty group that they made was come 
upon, abruptly, by a bulky shape that loomed up 
outside the open garage door ; and that would have 
withdrawn as quickly but for the little start of 
Ethel, who, over Archie’s shoulder, had seen. 

Archie, letting her go with incredible swiftness, 
turned to face the big man of the bottle-and-a-half 
whisky-flask; Sir Kobe. 

“Er! The fact is, sir, I have the honour to be 

engaged to Miss Johnstone ” announced young 

Laverock, very distinctly. 

“ Congratulations, indeed,” said Sir Kobe, pleas- 
antly, and put out his broad clean hand to the 
chauffeur’s long, oily and dusty one. “Best 


NINE DAYS’ WONDER 329 

wishes, Miss Johnstone, I’m sure. . . . Mind tell- 
ing me whether yon are talking about this? ” 

Ethel, hesitating — 

Archie, promptly, “I want to, Sir.” 

The big man glanced very kindly from one to the 
other. “ I would, if I were you. If I might offer 
the advice — ? It — well! It might make things a 
bit easier, Laverock. Time off, and that. . . . 
Quite so. . . . Then I’ve your permission and the 
young lady’s. . . . I’ll put in a word to my wife 
and the others ” 

The Third Day. This saw an anomaly indeed; 
the nurse-girl and the chauffeur dining in state 
with The Party! 

Yes ; thanks to “ the word ” which Sir Kobe had 
put in to the rest of the Kobes and Obes, it had 
been agreed thus to celebrate the Castle Engage- 
ment. 

In the dining-room (a stately room tall as a 
church, its two windows looking out on to the loch, 
with a cellarette and a long, narrow claw-footed 
side-board over which collectors would have done 
battle) this social Melange sat down . . . the two 
members of the staff whose people had been waited 
upon by such as the forebears of these hosts who 
were their masters now. From the wainscotted 
walls there gazed down the Kilted Sportsman in 
the Pierced Leather Jerkin, the languishing Greuze 
Lady, the Two Brothers with Ringlets (lifting the 
family chin above their cascading jabots of lace!), 
the lovely Raeburn. . . . 

Below them, the ladies of The Party, in those 
frocks from Reville or Callot. . . . Mrs. Obe, all 


330 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


decolletage and feather-fan though the evening was 
chill ; Mrs. Hopkinson-Kobe, low-cut pink-and- 
silver tissue; Mrs. Royds, of the resonant con- 
tralto, in a copy of that velvet Jay model. . . . 
Only Ethel Johnstone the nurse wore a dress that 
had cost less than fifty guineas and that showed 
less than the whole of her back. Her frock was 
black; a comment in crepe upon the whiteness 
of her throat and forearms, the splendour of her 
hair. . . . 

Perhaps the table had been decorated to suit her ; 
for Lady Kobe, the Admiral’s sister, who “ did ” 
the flowers, had clustered sheaves of double mari- 
golds — orange, lemon cream — into a black Wedg- 
wood bowl, and had produced painted candle- 
shades of blaek-and-tangerine, candle-sticks of 
Goode glass, lighter, more brilliant than silver. 

Young Laverock (his pre-War dress-suit fanned 
continually by the plumage of his hostess) sat 
talking prettily to Mrs. Obe, thinking ruefully, 
“Why aren’t these our candle-sticks? Our cham- 
pagne-glasses? our rat-tailed silver? Maddening 
to see all these other women with pearl strings; 
not that you’d see pearls on my girl’s neck, but 
how am I going to afford to get her even a decent 
ring? Why — Oh, why the Devil haven’t I got 
a place like this to take her to at once? If we’d 
even the lodge for our own. . . .” 

Interval of talk to his other neighbour, Mrs. 
Royds who had suddenly discovered that he 
(“ You ”) had been “ Captain ” Laverock. 

( “ Such a pity to drop it, I think ; because how 
are people to know? ”) 

Archie thought, “ They’re taking it very gal- 


NINE DAYS’ WONDER 


331 


lantly; carrying on exactly as if they’d never seen 
or heard of either of us before. Doing so jolly 
well too. . . . What’s that fellow talking to Ethel 
about? ” 

A swift “ fauve ” glance across the table to 
wdiere his fiancee sat between her host and his 
younger brother; a man of thirty or so with the 
“ pull ” (as far as women are concerned) of a lame 
leg. . . . He was the only member of The Party 
proper who had seen any fighting. 

“ Why/’ thought Archie resentfully, “ is she 
laughing? Doesn’t seem a very amusing sort of 
fellow to me. I suppose now, they’ve met officially, 
all the men will talk to her. ... I wish she 
wasn’t ever going to speak to any of the men here. 
Or anywhere else. Unreasonable, I suppose. . . . 
Good ! They’re going into the drawing-room. . . . 
Surely I’m not starting being jealous — thing I’ve 
never really been before once I knew the girl liked 
me. ...” 


The Fourth Bay. Shopping-expedition into the 
town with Ethel and a contingent of her “ brats.” 

. . . The presence of Freddie Royds, sandwiched 
in between Miss Johnstone and the man at the 
wheel, prevented conversation becoming tender. 
Only “ Ethel, you’ve never yet told me what you 
were doing in that hay-loft, that evening. Am- 
bushing me, I suppose? ” he laughed. 

“ Good Heavens, no. — I’d gone up to see if it 
were there that Babs had lost her Shetland scarf ; 
she’d been up there in the morning to look for 
eggs. The white hens always lay away there, it 
seems. . . . What an idee fixe you have that peo- 


332 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


pie are out to stalk you! Long experience, I sup- 
pose? ” said she, mischievously — but with a hint 
of seriousness in her tone. . . . 

They carried out the commissions of the Castle 
house-keeper; filled the car with flesh, fowl, and 
good red herring; bargained with the handsome 
fish-wives proffering wares from flat, oval-fish- 
baskets at the street-corner. 

“ I want to live in one of these Scots provincial 
towns,” declared Ethel. “ Everything looks so 
solid, comfortable and permanent and unhurried 
and As-it-was-bef ore-the War. And so unlike our 
hectic 'perches of homes in the South ! ” 

“ It shan’t live on a hectic perch,” Archie mut- 
tered consolingly across Freddie’s head. “ Wdien 
I’ve made my pile it shall live where it likes. Six 
months of the year at John o’ Groats, six at the 
Ritz.” 

“ Suites to the sweet? ” suggested the girl, flip- 
pantly, as the car pulled up again in front of the 
local town-hall — (hampers to fetch away from a 
previous day’s flower-show.) 

In the lower rooms they found a welter of fur- 
niture, of piled china, stacked pictures — effects, 
they were told, of an old maiden lady of the Town 
whose things were to be sold at a “ Rowp ” or 
auction the next day. 

“ Fancy an old maiden lady with all this fur- 
niture to herself,” muttered the engaged man, 
“when we haven’t got so much as a kitchen 
dresser! What, I ask you, do old maiden ladies 
want with three carved black oak four-poster ” 

The voice of Freddie, ecstatic at his elbow, 


NINE DAYS’ WONDER 


333 


“Laverock, Laverock! There is a most beautiful 
thing here; two most beautiful things! Come and 
look, Miss Johnstone, come and look. I want to 
buy them. White elephants. Can’t I buy them 
with my sweep-money? Then can’t I buy them 
afterwards at the sale if I bid more’n anybody? 
Can’t I? ” And the child gazed covetously upon 
the pair of white elephants — china ornaments of 
a debased type. 

“Extraordinary,” said Archie to Ethel, “the 
things that a small boy will take a fancy to ” 

“ Or a big boy,” said Ethel. They beamed upon 
each other, it may be said, as fatuously as ever did 
an engaged couple. They were extraordinarily 
happy and at rest, just to be near each other. 

At other moments it seemed to Archie as if she 
alone of all girls had the power to make him 
extraordinarily unhappy; restless. If he could 
only marry her at once, make sure she never left 
Ms sight again! 

The Fifth Bay. She did leave his sight, and in 
circumstanecs that made him more than ever rest- 
less; she and two of her charges were driven into 
the town in one of the smaller cars, to spend the 
day and attend the “ Rowp ” ; driven by the game- 
legged man of The Party. 

While the Castle chauffeur who had to convey 
and fetch the rest of The Party to the furthest 
boundaries of the shoot, fumed in secret. . . . But, 
that evening, he met her with his pleasantest 
smile. 

“ Get the elephants? ” was all he asked. 


334 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


“ My dear, we did get the elephants,” triumphed 
Ethel. “ The rubbish went off first, including a 
handful of china monstrosities with Freddie’s ele- 
phants as nucleus. For these I had to run to 
fifteen shillings, mark you! That is, Major Obe 
did; since the child had set his heart. He’s very 
kind ” 

“ Anything nice going that w r ould have done 
for Us?” 

“ Some oak chairs that fetched twelve pounds 
'apiece I rather liked. ... I didn’t think much 
of the auctioneer, though. He’d neither a hammer 
nor a sense of his opportunity. No! Not even 
when the whole auction-room broke into a roar of 
laughter because a mysterious and flute-like object 
which he’d put up as r this musical instrument 3 
turned out to be the poor old maiden lady’s ap- 
pliance for inhaling when she had asthma — Archie ! 
We are not amused? ” the girl broke off her 
chatter. “ What is the matter with you, Archie, 
to-night? ” 

“ Nothing. . . . Except that I can’t give you 
oak-chairs. I can’t motor into the town when I 
choose. Silly to mind, isn’t it? ” 

u You’re jealous,” she cried, in delight. “ I be- 
lieve you’re jealous of my having gone there with 
Major What’s-his-name.” 

“ Oh, I don’t think so? ” said young Laverock, 
evenly. ... He was, as it happened, passionately 
jealous of Major What’s-his-name. And, of Ethel’s 
cast off fiance . And of every man who had ever 
spoken to her, looked at her. 

Jealous as he was, he was yet not as madly, as 
deeply jealous as was this girl of his! 


NINE DAYS’ WONDER 


335 


The Sixth Day. One of these inclement summer 
days that seem colder than winter. Sky, strips of 
indigo and pearl -grey; land, sullen green; foliage 
in the Castle gardens blown back to show paler 
sides. At sunset, the wind fell. All-enveloping 
Scots mist wrapped itself wetly about the land. 

“ Hadn’t those two young people better be asked 
to join the party in the drawing-room? ” suggested 
!Mr. Obe. “ They won’t want to go out courting 
in that. ...” 

“ Bless my soul! why not, why not?” retorted 
Sir Kobe. “ I bet they’d rather go for a walk in 
anything.” 

But Miss Johnstone, on being invited, voted for 
an evening under cover ( quite possibly to tantalize 
her fiance, she was capable of it). Archie, taking 
it with grace, appeared after dinner in the drawing- 
room — that curious macedoine of maroon paper 
patterned with jade-green roses, of red-plush, Ger- 
man gilding, exquisite Louis Seize furniture, In- 
dian muslin antimacassars, marble-topped console 
tables, and massively-framed Canalettos — He 
joined the circle about the blazing log-fire, and 
made himself agreeable to Lady Kobe. 

Now the Admiral’s sister was one of these watch- 
ful composed blue-eyed women, soberly-dressed and 
with the quiet voice that is distinct above much 
shriller, less perfectly-enunciated chatter. To the 
ears of Ethel Johnstone, winding silk off the hands 
of Major Obe on the other side of the wide hearth, 
came the words — 

“ It was at the Joys’, then, that you met my 

brother . . . no, I never saw the fascinating 

Lucy, except of course in every Tatler and By - 


336 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


stander that one picked up at that time. Was she 
us pretty as the pictures?” 

u Oh, quite,” from Archie. “ Prettier. The 
colouring, you know. ...” He turned towards his 
Lady-love. “ Ethel, you knew Lucy Joy? She told 
me she was at school with you. . . . And, funny 
thing, I saw a photograph of Ethel at their house. 
I recognized it, before Lucy Joy said ” etc., etc. 

He could speak nonchalantly of this ex-flame 
who had flickered in his heart for — what? A fort- 
night. All over then, what there’d ever been. 
Lucy Smith, happily married. . . . 

Catching, however, the glint in Ethel’s eyes, an 
impulse of gay malice let him enlarge upon the 
prettiness of that other girl. . . . 

It only ended when someone else in The Party — 
The Party that had now adopted as personal 
friends two of its menials — suggested the old- 
fashioned game of Consequences. . . . 

Pencils. Half-sheets of note-paper. Hasty 
scribblings. Foldings over. Handings in. . . . 
Shrieks of laughter as the jovial voice of Mr. Obe 
read out the results. 

“ * Unbearable. Mrs. Royds ’ — Dear, dear! — met 
* over-dressed Tarzan of the Apes ’ at ( The End 
of the Passage She said, * You wonderful man, I 
adore you’ — Now, that’s young Laverock. Lav- 
erock, I bet you wrote that, ha, ha; kind of thing 
you get to hear, you ruffian, what, what? Tut. He 
said, ‘ I loathe these shooting-parties ! ’ The con- 
sequence was — Oh, tut, tut, I don’t think I can 
possibly Somebody read it for me ” 

Away at last from the racket and the laughter 


NINE DAYS’ WONDER 


337 


Archie and his girl found themselves, with a 
quarter of an hour’s grace, in the billiard room. 

Archie, quite conscious of the cloud upon him, 
parodied playfully. “ He said, r What have I done 
to put you off , Ethel darling V She said — 
M’m? Well, what does she say?” 

“ How, what do I say? i Good-night,’ I sup- 
pose?” “ Ha, she’s cross. Her turn to be 
jealous? ” 

“ What bosh ! ” snapped Our Ginger. 

Then, with well-assumed lightness, “ I’m not 
cross — why on earth should I be? Only I must 
have tramped over and over about fifteen miles of 
mushroom-field with the brats after tea and I’m 
tired. I want to get off to my haunted turret early 
to-night.” 

“That all?” 

“Yes, that’s all.” 

“ You won’t even sit down for two little minutes 
here — ” he pulled forward quickly one of the neat 
leather lazy-chairs — “ and let me sit on the arm 
and talk. . . . Too tired? ” 

“Rather too tired.” 

“Right-oh, then,” said Archie Laverock, coolly. 

His eyes were less indifferent than his voice; 
they showed a tawny gleam of exasperation, 
amusement, tenderness, savagery — contradictory 
elements to make up a whole that dragged and 
fastened him to this Girl of girls. . . . 

“Good-night,” she said, and turned her cheek 
up to his lips. 

But he did not touch her cheek. 

He just stood there looking at her as she paused, 


338 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


backed by the oak panelling and played over by 
the fire-light; her fiaming head tilted, one hand 
resting on the edge of the billiard-table. 

Now this was the least good point that she pos- 
sessed. With such glowing beauty of face, such 
shapeliness of shoulders, arms, superbly-poised 
young body, such neat feet, one would have ex- 
pected her to show such pretty hands. They were 
however unexpectedly square-tipped, strong, rather 
boyish; not pretty. . . . But to Archie Laverock 
this (her least beautiful feature) was a charm. It 
shows what he felt about her, that he should find 
most touching, attractive, delightful, the fact that 
her fingers were too square at the tips. 

Very suddenly he stooped and lightly kissed each 
finger. 

“ I love your hands,” he said in his most casual 
tone as he raised that gleaming head of his again. 
“ Good-night ” 

Then suddenly, in a voice that shook with storm 
he exclaimed, “ You red-haired handful ! ” 

She thought for a breathless second that he was 
going to catch her with violence to his breast. But 
he only turned abruptly to the open hearth, and 
with his heel, shoved an end of a log into the 
flames. 

“ Good-night,” he said again in his ordinary 
voice. 

She, a little subdued, “ Good-night, Archie.” 

He had to cram on all brakes so as not to give 
another word, another look as she slipped 
away. . . . 

She went; to lie for long awake in the dark- 
ness, thinking of him; thinking, thinking. . . . 


NINE DAYS’ WONDER 


339 


The Seventh Day. Deliberately he avoided her. 

Circumstances aided him. For this Democratic 
Vista of a shooting-party had widened, and it had 
now come to his being lent a gun. He spent that 
day as a guest upon the moors. A good day. . . . 

Further, Sir Kobe inquired if the young man 
played billiards; learning what his handicap was, 
hoped that “ Miss Ethel might spare him for an 
hour some evening.” 

Ethel was apparently all eagerness to see him 
spend this same whole evening away from her. 
But it was a dry evening ; the moon-up ; The Party 
kind-hearted. It ended in a moonlight walk for 
the lovers. 

A torrent of reproaches poured upon Ethel for 
a start; reproaches, but also the tenderest inflec- 
tions of which Archie’s voice was capable. 

“ Look here, how could you be such a little brute 
to me, all day? Yes : All day long. Not a glimpse. 
Not a syllable. Fed up with me already, are you? 
Is it already what you said about that other un- 
fortunate devil that you w r ere engaged to — yes! 
That it was like sitting on in the theatre after the 
play was all over ” 

“ Archie ! ” she protested, in a fervour . . . 
partly of relief. She had feared that after last 
night he w r ould sulk, be silent, leave it to her to 
make the advance. A masculine mood so hated of 
women that there are no words to describe the 
black resentment that, to the girl, must embitter 
the sweetest making-up. But she need not have 
been afraid. He had no use for clumsy weapons. 

So when she protested, “You were being the 
brute ” she found her protest smothered 


340 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


under his sudden kisses. Both his arms went 
round her heavy coat. For a moment, he crushed 
her lips against his, fiercely. Then, before she 
tired of that, his mouth brushed the hair away 
from above her ear, and he wdiispered, “ I wasn’t ” 
into a closer kiss — “ I wasn’t ! ” 

She pulled back against his arm and looked 
accusingly up into his face, spiritualized and pal- 
lid in the moonlight. 

6 * I see through you ! ” she cried. “ You think 
you can c manage ’ me even if I am what you said, 

‘ a red-haired handful.’ But don’t think I can’t 
see through you, Captain Laverock, every bit of 
you ! ” 

“ Then you see nothing,” retorted Archie Lave- 
rock with his heart in his voice, “ that isn’t utterly 
yours.” 

It was as prettily said as though he were being 
speciously insincere, but, for all that, it was the 
naked truth. 

The Eighth Day. In the morning another soak- 
ing downpour blew in from the sea. The Party, 
since it was Sunday and shooting was off, had 
taken lunch out in the cars and meant to try for 
John o’ Groats, but turned back and ate foie-gras 
sandwiches and cold grouse off paper-plates in the 
dining-room — all the servants being off duty. 

Young Laverock the chauffeur — who now alluded 
to himself as The Paid Guest — lunched also; in- 
deed, his lodge and his princely-mannered peasants 
saw little enough of him. Sir Kobe had taken an 
obvious fancy to the young man, questioned him 
about his prospects, heard such as he had, and 


NINE DAYS’ WONDER 


341 


offered “ to write to friends of his in the City ” 
... a promise that might mean much or little. 
Archie, being an optimist, hoped for much. 

In the afternoon it cleared up, so, after tea, 
again the cars went forth across seven miles or so 
of clean-swept country under the matchless air. 

A solid-built and unromantic Hotel was John o’ 
Groats’ house. Just below it the shore showed an 
irregular border of dark rocks with pools, below a 
strip of the whitest sands — sand made up of shell 
and shingle pounded to powder by winter gales. 
Sea, crystal-clear ; deep rock-pools like glass. 
Every pebble, every fragment of limpet-shell, the 
bit of jade-coloured ginger -beer-bottle picked up 
by little Babs, — everything on that shore was 
scoured and polished to a gem. 

“ It’s certainly the cleanest place I was ever at 
in my life,” declared Ethel, gazing about her. 

Beyond the tossing Channels, the Orkneys lay; 
mow a dim, greyly-mysterious barricade under the 
sea-showers, now, when * the sun lit upon them, 
springing out into defined nearness, showing 
every building or field. The rock on which stood 
the twin white light-houses of The Skerries seemed 
an altar with two tall candles to Our Lady of the 
Seas. For incense, the wild Atlantic breezes, pure 
as driving snow. 

While the men of The Party went in to sample 
the bar and the ladies retied veils before the 
looking-glasses lettered over with advertisements 
for Oxo or whisky, the children “explored”; 
Archie and Ethel walking behind them. 

At this juncture they were happy and matter- 
of-fact as those children themselves. They dis- 


342 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


cussed this place; these people. Books — Not 
much about those ; for Laverock, like many another 
young man whose strong card is personality, was 
weak on the written word. The girl herself had 
had to help with Archie’s letter that he had after 
all insisted upon sending to her step-mother. A 
stilted letter at best. Ethel teased him now about 
the miserable correspondent that she would have 
when he, Archie, got out to British East, or 
wherever he was finally advised or helped to go by 
those influential friends of Sir Kobe’s. 

“ Why is it,” she asked, “ that the best lover is 
always the worst love-letter writer, and vice- 
versa? ” 

“What do you know about that, Miss?” he de- 
manded, but laughingly, as they tramped on over 
those dazzling white sands against the wind; en 
camarade. 

For once neither of them had any wish either 
to kiss or quarrel. 

“We do quarrel rather a lot, if you come to 
think of it,” the boy said at last, after a pause. 
“ Since we’ve been engaged, I’ve just been think- 
ing, we have so fought.” 

Ethel said, “We always should.” 

“Am I such a quarrelsome person? Or are 
you? ” 

“ It’s not that, Archie. It’s — my always mind- 
ing so.” 

“Minding? Minding what, dear?” 

“ Those girls,” said Ethel, looking away towards 
the rocks. “ All those girls there were in your life. 

. . . Before 1 me.” 

Upon her clear and sunny mood there seemed 


NINE DAYS’ WONDER 343 

to come down a blackness, suddenly as the sea- 
showers that blotted out the Islands. 

“ Good Lord ! ” Archie took up uncomfortably, 
“ Why drag in — I don’t know what you mean— 
Girls ” 

“Yes. Girls you’ve known; admired. Like 
Lucy Joy. Girls you’ve kissed. Girls you've 
loved. ... I know. I told you I’ve always known 
that, Archie.” She turned to him a face of gath- 
ering trouble ; one red lock blown out of her russet 
sports-cap, waved across her throat. “ You aren’t 
going to pretend to me that there weren’t any.” 

“ I don’t pretend anything to you,” he said 
gently and sincerely. “ You know how I care for 
you. Good Heavens, makes everything else — well, 
simply never have happened ” 

“ It happened, though.” 

“Well, if — Well, but I say. Darling! Be 
reasonable. How many fellows of nearly twenty- 
six get married ... to the first — the very first 
girl that they’ve ever looked at? And if they do, 
what? Precious little catch for the girl, I should 
say ” 

“ I know. I’ve heard that theory,” from Ethel, 
in a voice that hardened as she went on. “ Once 
a married friend of mine said about some engage- 
ment, ‘An absolutely untouched heart , has he? 
And she , the Very First Love ? Poor child, she’s 
in for a tepid and a clumsy husband, I fear me ’ — 
Now, you agree with that, Archie ! ” 

Such an accusing glint she turned upon him. 

“ Yes, I know you’re thinking that it’s true 
enough,” she cried. “You think I’ ought to be 
glad that you’ve been ‘ broken in ’ to — how to treat 


344 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


me. I’ll tell you I always see through it all. The 
way you know one’s moods. The way you don’t 
repeat yourself. The way you touch me. The 
way you take hold of me. The — the ways you kiss 
me! Making your very voice sound as though it 
kissed me when you don’t ! D’you suppose I never 
notice? ” 

“ D’you want me to hope you don’t notice me? ” 
“ You’re doing it now — Trying to get round 
me,” she retorted, stiffening her spine and glaring 
out to sea. “ All part of it. The very way you 
brush your hair! That gloss you get, like satin. 
That verbena-wash you put on it — yes, the whole 
smell of nice hair-wasli and cigarettes and fresh 
air and clean handkerchief about you; your being 
so like a man in everything and yet so — so — so 

dainty ” 

“ Ah, rot, dearest ” 

“ It’s all learnt! To please women ! I know ! 
Oh! D’you suppose I wouldn’t rather have had 
a * clumsy ’ lover? ” cried this innocent, ungrate- 
fully. “ Women have taught you things. Another 

of them is ” 

“ Well? What?” 

“ The way you always put things charmingly. 
Never any stupid anecdotes! Never making fun 
of — of things girls mind. Never an ugly expres- 
sion. You always use the prettiest words for 
things ” 

“ How on earth d’you mean? ” 

“ When you said my hair was like a nosegay of 

marigolds in the wood’ ” 

“ So it was ” 

“ But you said * nose-gay ’ — not i bunch ’ ” 


NINE DAYS’ WONDER 


345 


“ But, darling, what a ridiculous trifle ” 

“ Nothing’s a trifle,” stormed the red-haired 
handful. “ It meant you knew that a girl is sen- 
sitive to the pretty words for things. You always 
use those ! Always ! Some girl said so, or showed 

you ! Some other girl — One of those! ” 

“ My dear child, need you go on as if I’d never 
had a job of work, or done a hand’s turn in my 
life except hang round petticoats,” complained ex- 
Captain Laverock. “ Good Lord, to hear you talk 
one would imagine that my whole aim in life — 

As if I’d been such a Don Thingummy ” 

“ You can’t say you haven’t been much, much 
more so than any ordinary young man.” 

“ I am an ordinary man ” 

“ Then what did you mean the other evening? ” 
she demanded fiercely. u When I asked you if 
you’d had a good summer and you laughed? You 
did laugh. What should you call a good summer? 
A fresh love-affair for May, June, July, and 
August, perhaps? ” 

Archie Laverock, genuinely scandalized to hear 
this far-fetched idea (as he considered it now), put 
into these blunt words and from that mouth, said 
sharply, “ For Heaven’s sake, Ethel, don’t talk like 

that, you don’t know what you’re saying •” 

.Then, more gently, “ Anything there ever was, dear, 
is washed out now. Can’t you understand that? 
Can’t you? What one wants, all one’s life, is the 
Real Thing. One’s so dashed impatient for it, 
Ethel darling. One tries — One thinks, ‘ Here’s 
the way home.’ A man, you know, wants that, at 
the bottom of his heart, the whole blessed time,” 
declared young Laverock, listening to himself as 


346 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


to some stranger speaking, and yet some stranger 
with whom he thoroughly agreed. “ Here’s the 
way Home/ one thinks, until one finds that it is 
another blind alley . . . another mistaken turn- 
ing. . . . Do you know that for years I’ve felt 
you were still to be found? ” 

“ I? ” 

“ I knew there was something waiting that would 

make all the other things — just nothing ” 

His tone should have convinced her, but her own 
words and the smouldering jealousies of her own 
heart were nearer to her; she had lashed herself 
up, suddenly, into an anger that was not now to 
be convinced. 

“ ‘ Nothing ’ to you, because you’re a man, I sup- 
pose,” she retorted bitterly. “ It’s everything to 
me. Every second I remember. I’m reminded. I 
tell you, I shall never stop minding, so dread- 
fully ” 

“And have I nothing to mind? D’you suppose, 
my dear girl, that I forget you were engaged to be 

married before you ” 

“ Pooh ! ” she flashed out. “ Is that the same 
thing? Now is it? An engagement of a few 
weeks! Then years of being put off anybody who 
liked me, years of only mooning and dreaming — 
of you. You, who all the time were having experi- 
ences that it destroys me to think about ! ” 

In her stormy jealousy she passed the bounds of 
what she herself understood ; she flung at him words 
— the first that came into her head — half-comiire- 
h ended, used only to hurt. 

“ You, who are a philanderer and blase and — 


NINE DAYS’ WONDER 347 

and sophisticated! You, who have tried every- 
thing ” 

; Hereat young Laverock (hurt now in his pride 
as a man and as a lover) stopped this innocent, 
this blundering lovely Fury with his look. Quietly 
he fixed her with his eyes, uncertain-coloured, but 
<very steady in regard. Quietly, steadily, he spoke. 

“ At least I’ll ask you to believe just this, Ethel. 
I have never tried anything,” said he, “ except 
Love.” 

Possibly she did not fully understand. A gently- 
bred, conventionally-nurtured girl has the power 
of reading everything, hearing most things, seeing 
much — and withal of apprehending nothing of 
Love and Life. Many excellent wives and mothers 
of families pass thus to their honoured graves. 
. . . There were, however, possibilities in this red- 
haired handful of Archie Laverock’s. . . . 

Whether she yet understood him or not, the quiet 
dignity of his tone, the look of the boyish figure 
that was suddenly that of a much older man, 
steadied her too, But there was no time for an 
answer. 

Cries of, “ Now then! Now then! Chil- 
dren! — Hi! You young people! — Babs, Babs! — 
Freddie ! ” rang out above them. 

The Party were preparing to start home again, 

The Ninth Day. Now this was a day stolen 
from the gods. It was the birthday of Sir Kobe; 
and that profiteering, philanthropic, and childless 
sportsman had chosen his own “ treat.” 

Which was, that he gave “ the two engaged 


348 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


young people ” the day off from twelve o’clock ; 
packed them himself into the two-seater; himself 
arranged the luncheon-basket with the cold pigeon- 
pie and the cheese-sandwiches and the Buszard 
cake and the mould of blanc-mange-with-currants 
and the bottles of white wine, and Perrier; and 
beer, and the Thermos flask of coffee. . . . 

“ Now, that ought to do you. . . . Miss John- 
stone, my wufe will have her eyes on your ‘ brats 9 
until you return. Off you go, Harchibald. . 

On dooty as usual to-morrow, you know, Lave- 
rock ! 99 

“ Yessir. . . . Thank you, Sir. . . . Thanks 
awfully. ...” 

Off they went, to the blithest day of their lives 
so far. Storm had cleared the air in Ethel’s heart, 
it seemed; their happiness was unclouded as the 
weather. For suddenly that weather had become 
perfect. Windless, sun-warmed. In place of the 
cloaking mist there spread itself above all the 
country-side that invisible mantle of honeyed scent 
that is the soul of the heather. 

Seated on purple heather overlooking surround- 
ing seas of lupin-blue they feasted. Together they 
buried their pigeon-bones, packed up the basket, 
then lounged, almost too happy to talk. 

She did not smoke ; declared she was “ too mod- 
ern.” Archie was pleased with this as with all 
else about her. He found he hated women to 
smoke. Why did they? Mere force of habit; like 
sheep. Or to show off a pretty hand ; one girl he’d 
known had certainly smoked for no other reason. 

. . . But he liked Ethel to light for him his own 
cigarette, to send two puffs of smoke spiraling into 


NINE DAYS’ WONDER 349 

the summer’s air before she placed it between* his 
lips. 

“Ah ” he sighed blissfully. Then, having 

smoked for a minute only, he tossed down the 
cigarette, carefully extinguishing its tip in the 
peaty soil. He tossed off his cap, flung himself 
backward, laid his head in Ethel’s lap, and looked 
up, reversed, into her face. 

“Happy?” asked the girl softly. 

“ Utterly happy — except for one thing.” 

“ What? ” 

“ Hate being only engaged. Hate not knowing 
when things can be definitely fixed up.” 

She gave an odd little wise-sounding laugh as 
she looked away from him across the sweep of 
purple to the cove far below them, with rocks and 
pools w T here ribbon-w T eed waved and curled and 
made mysterious depths of brown and jade-colour. 
She thought, “ Bother, why didn’t I bring a bath- 
ing costume? If we were not ‘ only engaged ’ we 
could run down there and swim together; he’s 
never seen me swim. What a pity ” 

“ Penny for your thoughts, Ethel darling.” 

“ I — was thinking that perhaps this is the hap- 
piest kind of engagement after all. Just because 
it is so indefinite. No worry about ‘ fixing.’ We 
can’t! It just — goes on and on. I believe that’s 
why it suits you, Archie! Do you know, I can’t 
imagine you — married.” 

“ Indeed, Miss. Pray how can you imagine my 
finishing my bright young life? ” 

“ Oh . . . By something picturesquely tragic, 
perhaps ‘Whom the Gods love/ touch. . . . Per- 
haps swimming across dividing waters to get to 


350 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


me, and being drowned in your youth and beauty, 
like Leander ” 

“ M’m. Thoughtful of you ! ” 

They laughed lazily; subsided into reverie. He 
murmured something about “ have to fix up some 
time soon, you know.” And, “ Those friends of 
Sir Kobe’s! Wish they’d write about me. . . .” 

“ There may be a letter when we get i« ” she 
suggested. “ Lady Kobe was going to call at the 
post-office, I know . . .” (unconscious of what 
was even then being fetched). “ I say,” she sniffed 
luxuriously, “ isn’t this heather-scent divine! ” 

“ Nice smell,” said Archie, seriously. “ Oh, per- 
fectly good smell.” 

She touched the satin-glossed head on her knees 
to smooth it, then quickly took away her hand. 

“ Put it back,” grunted Archie. 

“ I thought you didn’t like having your hair 
rumpled or touched, perhaps.” 

“ I’ve always loathed it, as a matter of fact. 
... I like you to, though,” said he, boyishly. 

Then, as if he’d just thought of something, he 
sat up. He made the swiftest movement of hands 
to his head. 

From tli at carefully -groomed gleaming cap of 
satin, he shook out his thick, fine hair into a mop. 

. . . You think perhaps it would be sticky? 

Nullement. He used no greases on the shining 
stuff, just that verbena-lotion, much washing, and 
pressing down with his palms. Now he shook out 
that adorable mop of gold silk. He brushed it 
against her throat, her cheeks. 

“ Smooth it all down again for me,” he coaxed. 


NINE DAYS’ WONDER 351 

With her hands she smoothed, coifed him once 
more. 

She whispered, “ Archie — Archie ! Oh, but why 
did you do that? It made me feel as if — as if 
you’d given me something,” she said very shyly, 

“ that nobody else has had ” 

“ Well. They haven’t.” 

“ You meant it for that? ” 

“Yes, darling. You understood? My sweet! 
l^es.” 

“ Then, Archie — I want to tell you something.” 

“ Yes. What? ” 

“ Since yesterday — When I was such a beast 

to you ” 

“You were— Well?” 

“ Well, something has seemed to come all right. 
Those other girls ” 

Pause. ... A gull wheeled and cried and disap- 
peared. Young Laverock, his eyes on the sea, 
waited. 

She said, wonderingly, “ Those other loves. . . . 
They don’t matter. I know they’re all over. 
That’s all past. None of them can ever come 
again.” 

“ But I told you that.” 

“ Yes, but I didn’t know. I do know now. . . . 
D’you see that I know now? You don’t really 
think I’m ‘a handful’?” 

“An armful,” he laughed. 

In sweet accord they left the place, and as they 
went, Ethel turned back to kiss her hand to it. In 
perfect peace and happiness they sped home — 


352 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


To be intercepted on the long Castle drive by 
little Freddie Royds with those two letters for 
Laverock — one, that fateful Letter. . . . 

One, a letter in a feminine handwriting. One, 
in a business-looking envelope. 

Both such ordinary-looking letters ! 


CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 


CRASH 

“ Fond lover, never, never shalt thou kiss, 

Though winning near the goal.” 

— Keats. 

I T was the business-looking envelope that 
Archie opened first, guessing a message from 
those friends of Sir Kobe’s. 

But the letter forwarded in his pal’s writing, 
from the London headquarters of his late Firm, 
was headed with the address of a firm of solicitors 
in North Wales. It began thus — 

“Dear Sir, 

Re Mr. Rice-Matheivs, deceased. 

u We are acting for the trustees and 
executors of the will of the late Mr. Rice- 
Mathews. You will be sorry to hear that 
Mr. Rice-Mathews died on the 15th of 
July last. 

“ Our late client made a will under 
which you benefit very largely. He has 
left you half his real estate. We think 
you know he was a large land and slate- 
quarry owner in these parts; and so far 
as we have been able to ascertain the prop- 
erty you now inherit will produce an in- 
come of £5,000 a year. 

“ If you care to call upon us we shall 


354 THE ARRANT ROYER 

be pleased to acquaint you with further 
details. 

“ You will of course understand that 
there will be some little delay before you 
actually come into receipt of the money, 
certain formalities have to be gone into 
with regard to the proof of the will and 
carrying in the necessary accounts for the 
Inland Revenue Office. 

Yours faithfully, 

Pritchard, Morgan, and Sons.” 

The voice of Ethel broke in anxiously, “ Archie, 
is it something from those people about your 
going ” 

“ No. No. ... I say, darling, somebody’s gone 
and died. ... I never knew ” 

“Oh! Archie! ” She threw him a little 

sorry look. “ Well, I’ll see you to-night as usual. 
I’ll go now ” 

She went, hastily, to seek her charges. 

Archie Laverock, left alone, turned in a sort of 
stupor to the other letter. This was in a feminine 
handwriting that he did not recognize, and 
began — 

“ My dear Archie ” — 

He turned to the end. “ Mauve,” he said. 

Mauve? 

He read, 

“ My dear Archie, 

“ I write to you because my sister’s 
people told me that you were abroad, and 
I don’t think you can have heard about 


CRASH 


355 


Grandfather. I know you'd be glad to 
hear that he went out exactly as he would 
have wished without any further illness 
or bother. He was reading in that big 
chair of his in the Veranda, and when we 
went to tell him tea was ready he seemed 
to be asleep still, but it was all over. I 
know you’ll be sorry for me, but we 
needn't be for him. 

“ He was always extremely fond of you 
and after you left talked of you con- 
stantly. Archie, I think I had better tell 
you that although he imagined at one 
time that you and I might think of get- 
ting married, this wild idea had quite, 
quite gone out of his head for weeks be- 
fore he died. He knew that I was en- 
gaged to be married to someone else, and 
became at last quite contented about this, 
knowing that this other person was so 
suited to me. So that you need have 
absolutely no scruple about this money 
that Grandfather has left to you. I am 
very glad about it (though I am afraid 
the whole thing was rather a shock to 
your late firm ; I believe Grandfather 
gave them some warning about it, how- 
ever, while you were still at Khos). 

“ He has left the other half of the 
property to me, and also Khos, where we 
shall go on living afterwards. You must 
come and stay later. 

“ I am going to be married to Major 
Lionel Ellis next month. Grandfather 


356 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


could not bear to have anything put off, 
and he stated in his will that ‘ nobody 
was to wear. mourning for him, who al- 
ways delighted in colour.’ People here 
are shocked because the dear old man 
left orders that he was not to be buried 
in the family vault with Grandmamma 
but to be cremated and to have his ashes 
‘ scattered to the free winds on the hills 
behind Rhos.’ I couldn’t help remember- 
ing how he once burst out to you and me 
with, ‘All my life I have been surrounded 
by these good women!’ Lionel said he 
evidently barred having any more of it 
in death. Lionel is so understanding 
always. I hope you’ll meet him one day. 

“ Wish me luck, Archie, as I always 
shall to you. 

Yours ever sincerely, 

Mauve.” 


Over these two thunderbolts young Laverock 
pondered while he put away the car and while 
he took his evening-meat — as he elected, this 
evening, to take it at his lodge. 

His first distinct feeling was of shock. Old Mr. 
Rice-Mathews, dead . . . 

“Died on the 15th of July last ” — 

“ While I was in Dinard,” Archie reminded 
himself. “ While I was gadding about at St. 
Malo. By Jove.” 

Dead! That kindly, eccentric old man. Memo- 


CRASH 


357 

ries of him rose clearly; defiant eyes under the 
thistle-down hair, the bunch of seals, thin hands 
on the clutch, chiselled old lips that cultivated 
Twentieth Century slang. . . . 

All gone. “Scattered to the free winds!” If 
ever a soul rejoiced in its emancipation from the 
flesh, thought young Laverock, it would be that of 
this invalid of thirty years’ standing, who had so 
loved colour, Youth, life, Romance • . and who 
had been so imprisoned. . . . 

Had cared, too, for Archie . . . 

“Archie, my dear hoy — ” how often that had 
sounded in the frail, indomitable old voice! 

He had been planning for Archie’s benefit ! 
Again, the young man remembered the old man’s 
quotation of “ almonds to those who have no teeth. 
'You’ll keep those fine teeth of yours to the end, 
my hoy,” hadn’t he said? and something about 
“ Remember, when you get almonds, that I shall 
hope you found them sweet” 

Almonds. He meant, all the time, this money 
of his that he had left to the young man for whom 
he’d taken a liking. Undeserved liking. 

“ I shall never be able to — to thank the old boy 
or anything,” thought young Laverock, inconse- 
quently enough, but with a lump rising in his 
throat. “ Dash ! I never even said Good-bye to 
him properly. I wish to Heaven that I’d been 
able to see him just once again.” 

Here, the Highland housekeeper who attended 
to him brought in and set before Archie his pitcher 
of ale. 

“ Thank you,” he said, absently, poured out 


358 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


some ale into his tankard and, on an impulse, got 
up from his chair. 

Standing by the open window with its glimpse 
of sea and the wide stretch of evening sky, the 
young man raised his tankard. As if it had been 
in a mess room that was honoured of comrades 
gone, he drank — a Silent Toast. 

He had not thought that before any Death he 
would find himself so shaken, so sorry. . . . 

With a long breath he turned at last to the 
thought of what had been in the other letter. 

Mauve. . . . 

Very decent of Mauve (always a sportswoman!) 
to think of letting him know that he need let no 
idea of her deter him from taking that money. 
Certainly he might have had a scruple. But not 
in the face of her letter. 

Mauve, who was going to be married! Just as 
Lucy Joy had married. . . . 

Girls, he thought, passingly, managed to chop 
and change pretty quickly. Luck to them, though : 
certainly luck to Mauve! 

Lionel Ellis? Lionel? 

That chap? Yes. Persia and the silver rose- 
water sprinkler. He remembered. The best of 
luck to those people! 

And then at last his stupor and shock and be- 
wilderment began to fall away from the young 
man, and the aspect dawned upon him of what all 
this would mean, personally, to him. 

Five thousand a year. 

Five thousand pounds a year! 

The salary of a Cabinet Minister. . . . 


CRASH 


359 


Compared to The Party now dining at The 
Castle he, young Laverock, was not a rich 
man. . . . 

But it was affluence for all that. Affluence. 

He saw himself asking Sir Kobe and his friends 
over to his (Laverock’s) own little shoot next 
year! 

To-night his girl was at the tryst before him. 

“ I say, Ethel darling, do forgive me. I had 
those two letters to answer before I came out. 
Two very important letters — In fact — ! ” he stam- 
mered with excitement. “ They’re — Now pre- 
pare yourself for something. My dear — Here, 
better read for yourself. It is still light enough 
out here. Read this, Ethel. Just read it. This, 
first ” 

He handed over to her that lawyer’s letter. 

Standing at her rounded elbow, he re-read it 
with her. 

“ What — ” she began, dazed, turning to him at 
last. “ But who was this Mr. What is it?” 

He hurried out explanations. “And the poor 
old boy — D’you see? D’you see? He’s insisted 
on leaving all that to me. It’s so touching, it’s — 
Do you know I very nearly blubbed? But, Ethel! 
Have you got it yet? ...” 

“ I — suppose so,” the girl took up slowly, 
slowly; raising her eyes from the paper and look- 
ing out across the field as if at vistas that he did 
not see. “ It means you will be — You needn’t 
go abroad unless you like. You won’t have to go. 
You can stay; do as you choose, now. Archie! 
you won’t have to go ! ” 


360 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


“ No. And I shan’t have to wait, either,” his 
voice rang out. “ Of course I can do as I like. 

As I like! We can get married at once ” 

The last words broke off. It was as though 
some discovery had been sprung upon him by his 
own voice saying this thing. 

“ We can be married at once ” 

Married — 

At once — 

He, married — 

Perfectly involuntarily, perfectly unconsciously 
a look crossed his face. It mirrored that light- 
ning-swift revulsion of feeling deep down in 
the sub-conscious emotions of the young man. 
Reaction, recoil, old habit of mind in the 
Rover. 

It was dismay. Quite unmistakably it was con- 
sternation in those “ fauve ” eyes of his ; the look 
of some free wild creature who after a life-time 
of happy roving finds itself at last and suddenly 
— trapped! 

Like a flash the look passed, with that impulse 
that had called it up. A second, later and the 
Rover himself scarcely recognized that they had 
been. 

“ Darling,” he took up in fondest delight. “ I 
say, darling ! You see what it means to us ! ” 

He had not reckoned with the eyes, with the 
heart of the woman who so loved his face that* she 
could trace every flicker of change upon it. Even 
in the uncertain evening light that tell-tale look, 
gone as soon as there, had been seen, construed. 
A knife into Ethel’s heart would have been kind- 
ness in comparison. 


CRASH 


361 


Utterly quietly she said, “ Of course. I see.” 

“But — Isn’t it wonderful? Aren’t you — What 

is it ? ” the Rover said sharply. “Aren’t vou 

glad? ” 

“I am awfully glad,” she said, simply, « for 
you.” She handed back the letter. “But — this 
alters everything for me.” 

“What d’you mean?” he started forward. 
Gathering dismay was in his face and voice. 
“Look here! Darling girl — What’s all this? 
What are you talking about ” 

She put her hand up to her big collar as she 
turned. 

“ Don’t come with me, please.” 

Her gentleness as she said it raised defences 
grim as the Castle turrets about her. 

“ Don’t let us talk any more about it,” she 
added. “ I must think this over — No, I needn’t 
think.” 

Each syllable put him further from her. He 
recognized that here was no teasing, no caprice, 
no flash of red-haired temper, not the usual spirit- 
for-fighting that he knew. 

She coldly meant — something that froze him 
cold. 

He stood; frozen, to hear what she said before 
she left him. 

“Archie, I am very sorry ” 

He 'knew what was coming: he stood to hear his 
sentence. Into those moments the Rover crammed 
all and more of any suffering than ever he had 
caused in the whole of his career. 

She, his One Love! said, “Archie, I am very 
sorry. It’s been a — I made a mistake, I find. I 


362 THE ARRANT ROYER 

don’t want to go on with this. I can’t marry you 
now.” 

Without another w T ord she sped quickly down 
the lane towards the Castle lights. 

She was gone. 

He stood there. Darkness closed in around him 
before he moved. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE 


CLIMAX 

“A-roving, a-roving, 

Since roving’s been my ruin, 

I’ll go no more a roving ” 

— Chantey. 

T HE day after that (unaccountable) Crash 
between the Castle fiances was a gloomy — 
an indigo day to little Freddie Royds. 
Nobody wanted him. 

The nursery-party was “ stodgy.” Miss John- 
stone gave out that she had a headache. His 
mother, with the rest of the Castle-ladies, was call- 
ing on the shooting-tenants of a house ten miles 
away; the game-legged Major haying motored 
them over in the Wolsey. But Laverock, though 
free — the beloved Laverock had made it clear that 
for once he did not mean to be bothered with 
small boys. 

Hart, the Wolf-cub, proceeded to make himself 
scarce. 

At tea-time, no Freddie appeared in the nursery- 
wing. 

The children’s Nurse sent over one of the High- 
land maids to inquire at the garage. 

Back came the message that Freddie, since 
shortly after lunch, had not been seen. 

“ Fancy,” put in his cousin Babs cheerfully 

through a huge mouthful of jelly-piece, “ if he’s 
363 


364 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


gone down to the shore and got cut off by the 
tide like in books.” 

“What nonsense!” snapped Miss Ethel John- 
stone, from the head of the table, more crossly 
than anybody under twelve had ever heard her 
speak. “ Of course he’s all right — mushrooming 
and forgotten the time again.” 

But with the words she rose. 

She w r as, indeed, thankful for an excuse to get 
out into the open air again by herself, away for 
a few minutes from the little girls of whom 
she was ordinarily fond! To-day they were on 
her nerves ; Babs, who at nearly twelve was 
still a tall tomboy devouring Henty and the 
more blood-thirsty serials in the Boy’s Own 
Paper, seemed as irritating as Dorothy, who had 
begun to show airs and demureness and wist- 
fulness, who cared inordinately about the colours 
of her jumpers. Dorothy was within a month of 
Babs’ age, detestable and variable when a girl can 
be Woman or Elf or Hoyden or pretty Baby still. 

. . . And it all comes to the same thing ten years 
on, thought Ethel Johnstone bitterly as she sped 
out of the Castle and down the field at the back 
where the sea-gulls chased the hens from their 
food. All of them end up as women; creatures 
made to love and suffer — or to not love, and 
suffer. It’s all suffering in any case. . . . 

This was how she felt. She had had a night 
of wakefulness which can only be described as 
refined hell. 

Had she not sent away the only man who could 
make her happy? The only man who could never 


CLIMAX 


365 

make any woman happy? Misery was in store for 
her whether she ever saw him again or whether 
she didn’t. What bitter Fate had ever let her 
meet Archie Laverock? Four years ago the mere 
sight of him had thrown her whole life out of 
gear. Had she ever been able to forget him since? 
Would she ever be able to forget him now? Never. 
Less than ever. Why had she ever come here, to 
this? 

Nine days of bliss — storming bliss, perhaps. 
Then last night’s crash. That look of his — It 
seared her. 

If only her anger against him could let her feel 
it was possible to be content without him! She 
found herself raging as she mechanically followed 
the lane that led to the bit of turfy cliff. She 
had hurried down the stony beach to the beginning 
of those rocks that, barricade after barricade, shut 
off the coves, before she remembered again what 
brought her down there. 

Freddie. Of course. Little Freddy was lost — 
How like everything else on this day of misfor- 
tunes ! 

“ Freddie ! ” she called sharply, but only the 
sea-gulls answered. 

Then, round a rock she came face to face with 
the last man on earth she wanted to see at that 
moment. The last man who wanted to see her! 

Archie Laverock, who had decided that the only 
thing was to beg off from his job and to go South 
again, pleading this law-business for his excuse 
the very next day, had come down out of restless- 
ness for a tramp on the shore. 


366 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


Now lie must needs meet her. 

He dragged his cap off and did not know if he 
ought to speak or not. 

She spoke, hurriedly enough. “ Have you seen 
Freddie? ” 

“ No. Have you lost him? ” 

“ He’s disappeared,” said Ethel, as if to a 
stranger. “ The maids say they caught sight of 
him last running down towards the shore.” 

“By Jove!” said Archie, also in the tone of a 
stranger. “ I haven’t seen anything of him. We’d 
better hunt round these rocks. The tide is com- 
ing in.” 

“ Yes. If you go round there, I’ll take this 
way.” 

He went in one direction, she in another. Sick 
fear grew in the hearts of each as minutes passed. 
. . . Up the beach, down the beach, in and out 
of the rocks they w r ent. 

No sign of the lost child. 

“ Lost child.” Oh, words to chill the blood and 
stop the pulses with their ominous meanings! 
In the City what images do they bring? Murder- 
ous street-crossings, traffic. ... In the woods? 
... A lurking snake. . . . The country -lanes? 
... A tramp hanging about, up to no good. . . . 
The river? A sliding bank, a little foot that 
slips. . . . 

And what about this shore of treacherous rocks, 
with that heavy inrushing tide? 

Archie Laverock, clambering from boulder to 
boulder with sea-weed popping beneath his boots, 
peering; searching; swore softly under his breath 


CLIMAX 367 

so as not to admit that anything but anger filled 
his mind. 

That little blighter ! . . . that wistful, straight- 
looking little chap who called him “ Laverock,” 
and had been his companion on that four-days’ 
run up from London. . . . 

“ To the North! ” he seemed to hear the childish 
pipe exulting. 

To the North that Archie wished he’d never set 
foot in or seen. ... It had done in everything 
else and now it seemed to have done in that poor 
little devil. 

“Freddie! ” he called, all the more loudly to 
reassure himself and that distracted red-haired 
girl who was now beginning to run quite wildly 
to and fro, calling also “ Freddie — Where are 
you, Freddie?” 

And where, meanwhile, was Freddie Royds? 

Not far away. Crouched low, on hands and 
knees, he was stealing round the base of a rock, 
and his bright eyes shone with all the enjoyment 
known to Pathfinder, Deerslayer, Mowgli, Tarzan, 
and all the wolf-cubs that ever were. He was 
creeping in and out, “ doing the snake-formation, 
achieving the silent stalk.” 

He thrilled with the pride that he was outwit- 
ting the grown-ups; Miss Johnstone who was her- 
self a Cub-master, Laverock who had scouted in 
No-man’s Land ! They didn’t see him ! They 
didn’t spot! They shouted and called! 

“ Freddie! Fred — ! Ah!” broke oft Archie 
Laverock softly to himself. 

At last he had spotted. Thirty yards away he 


368 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


caught sight of something that emerged; an edge 
of grey worsted, a pair of skinny brown legs end- 
ing in school-boots a size too large. 

Archie hared up, softly. . . . The pose of those 
legs reassured him. It was no accident. . . . 
He beckoned to Ethel down the beach, put a finger 
on his lips and silently stalked that little stalker. 
Now the boy had wriggled to a crevice between 
two boulders at the foot of a steep rock. 

Archie crept up that rock, round the bottom of 
which the wolf-cub’s excited face was thrust. 
The child was a foot or so too low for the man 
to reach him. 

Again Archie turned to Ethel. White-lipped 
she was nerving herself for what she might have 
to see, the small still face . . . little limbs 
dangling . . . blood. . . . 

Archie pointed to his own ankles. She grasped 
and held them with those boyish, strong, unpretty 
hands of hers. 

He let himself down. 

Then, swift as the cat that by the scruff lifts 
her kitten out of the way, he grabbed at the boy’s 
jersey. He swung him up, dumped him down, sit- 
ting, on the rock. 

“ Got you.” 

The boy, as he scrambled out of his rescuer’s 
hands and to his feet, was flushed and laughing. 
Full of glee, he shrilled, “ Oh, Laverock, if the 
waves hadn’t made such a noise I’d have ” 

His treble piping voice died away as he became 
aware of the wrath — the unfamiliar wrath on the 
face of his captor. 


CLIMAX 


369 


u Go home,” Laverock ordered him sharply. 
In the re-action of relief he could have thrashed 
young Freddie within an inch of his life there 
and then. “ Get along. Quick ! ” 

One astonished glance. . . . The child turned, 
scrambled obediently along the rocks to the turfy 
cliff and started for the fields. . . . 

With a gasp his elders, having watched him go 
in silence, turned and faced each other. 

A strange look passed. . . . 

What was it that flew from eyes to eyes now 
that the danger was lifted that had gripped these 
two in its terror? A shared thought. . . . Sup- 
pose such a thing had happened to a child of hers — 
a child of his — 

They looked at each other. 

Ethel gasped, “ How dare — dare anything give 
one such a fright ” 

Speaking savagely, Archie retorted, “You gave 
me one, last night.” 

So, in that moment when everything had seemed 
to be over, everything began again. With his eyes 
still on hers, he said now, quietly, “ Well. What 
about it?” 

“About ? Last night ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Oh, that,” she said, hurriedly. “ Well, that’s 
as I said, of course. It’s no use re-opening that, 
is it? That’s all over, isn’t it? There isn’t any 
more to be said, is there?” 

So — So she went quickly on. 

“You see, don’t you? What a fatal mistake it 
would be: for you to marry anybody. I don’t 


370 


THE ARRANT ROVER 


think we need say another word about it, need 
we?” she still continued, desperately. “ How 
could I go on with such an engagement ? ” 

“ You’d said you knew it was all right.” 

“ It was, before that letter came, and showed 
me. That news about your coming in for that 
money. Oh! I’m not going to discuss anything. 

But, when you realized ! Don’t you think I 

saw how you looked?” 

“ Looked ” 

“Blank! Just because you knew that now 
things could be ‘ definitely fixed up.’ You were 
happy in our engagement only as long as it w T as 
indefinite — Oh, no, no, I won’t talk about it,” 
she cried, standing there facing him but with her 
eyes upon the waves beyond his shoulder. “ As 
soon as you knew there was nothing to stand in 
the way of our getting married at once — That 
was a shock. A blow! You felt, suddenly — 
Tied. 6 My God ! I shall be married and done 
for before I can say Knife.’ You felt it, you 
looked it, I saw you and you can’t, ‘ can’t deny 
it ’ ” 

He let her run down. Intently he watched her, 
backed by that stormy contest of rocks and waters. 
Any courtship of his (it somehow happened) 
seemed to have been set in the open air; here was 
the wildest scene of all. Beyond where they 
stood the waves rose in long, towering ridges; 
they curled over into deep green curves, black- 
shadowed ; they crashed into a commotion of 
marbled jade-and-white. That danger-signal of 
her red hair broke loose and rioted in the winds, 


CLIMAX 371 

but, her adorable body braced against those roving 
words, her feet were on the rock. 

He looked at the picture, loving it. Still very 
quietly, he answered her. 

“ Ethel. Supposing I don’t deny what you say. 
Supposing I did feel like that. Just for the first 
instant. The moment afterwards, though — ah, 
darling ! ” 

“ No, don’t ever say that to me now ” 

“ (I shall.) For, that ought to have shown you. 
Doesn’t it show you that if I could feel like that 
and yet — yet the moment afterwards could want 
you still to marry me, could want you so, so — 
Doesn’t that show you that F’s all different with 
me now? ” 

Silence. . . . Another wave crashed. 

He said, humbly and simply: “I don’t know 
how to make you believe. It’s true, though. 
Try.” 

“ Ah, so much better not to, so much wiser 
not ” she protested in a quivering voice. 

She knew that she was losing. 

She started away from him. She saw nothing 
of those stormy moving waters, beyond, those 
rocks below those racing Scots clouds above. She 
saw nothing but his face, the charm and the spell 
of it. 

He took a step towards her. Another step and 
she knew that she would be in his arms again, 
enslaved; her Fate decided for her for good 
or ill. 

Which? 

To marry such a type— Asking for trouble 
and seeing that she got it! 


372 


THE ARRANT ROYER 


How, how could she give him up? Even if it 
faded, it would be Rapture that otherwise she 
would never know. Rapture worth any price that 
the enraptured jealous heart might have to pay. 

Suppose, though, that she did not have to pay? 
Supposing she held him just because he in turn 
found her so wayward, so capricious? 

Supposing that at last — at last he was tired of 
Change and turned to the old common sweet 
realities of nest and mate and babes — 

“ But you’ve always been such a Rover,” she 
faltered. “ You can’t help it. They won’t let 
self ” 

“ There are no ‘They,’ now. You said your- 
self— t— ” 

“ There will be more, others, new ones ! ” she 
cried. “ You know there will. What people have 
always been, they go on always being. There’s 
something in you; it must have been there from 
your cradle. . . . Once I heard a saying, ‘ Wrap 
the babe in his mother’s shift , and the girls will 
always love him ” 

“You shall wrap him in anything you dash 
well like, dear,” he muttered fervently, “if only, 
if only you ” 

“I mean you!” She flamed with live colour; 
glowed like a beacon set between clouds and 
rock. “You’ll be like that as long as you live.” 

“ I won’t.” 

“You will, Archie! You ” 

But he caught her, smothered her protest in 
what is said to be the only effectual way to stop 
a woman’s mouth. 

Then he let her pull away for a second so that 


CLIMAX 373 

lie might see, all alight, the exasperated, the 
adoring face raised to his own. 

“ I swear there'll never be anybody but you,” 
he passionately whispered to her, “ after this. 
Never. Oh, my only sweetheart, never. This is 
the end of that. This is home. . . 

So whispered the Arrant Rover. 


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